Fusing Confessional and Pulpit: Analysis of a Romantic Ballad Valerie Prevosnak

As a time that marked radical changes in the way that poetry was written, the Romantic period of English Literature produced many works still celebrated and studied today. It was during this period that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote one of the most noteworthy works of English literature, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The following paper will explore the structure and subject matter of this chilling ballad of supernatural penance for atrocities committed at sea as they relate to the Romantic period of English literature. It will also reveal the two major themes of the work, equal treatment and guilt, and how they relate to the poet's own life, as well as to the political and social changes taking place during this turbulent period in English history.

The structure of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is similar to other Romantic poems in several ways. First, it is a ballad, a poetic genre that rose to a major literary form during the Romantic period. Coleridge combines strong end-rhymes, primarily following an abcb rhyme scheme with internal rhymes, with a ballad meter of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. This causes the poem to be read much as traditional...