Imagination in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' Anonymous 12th Grade

Samuel Coleridge uses the imagination as an exploratory implement in his epic ballad: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. As one of the first generation Romantics, Coleridge used the stimulating and innumerable potential possibilities evoked by the imagination to challenge popular belief in the Rational, the Secular, and the Scientific that was characteristic of the spiritually restrictive Enlightenment epoch.

The reader is encouraged to question if the Mariner has merely imagined his experiences, or if the harrowing events truly occurred, by Coleridge’s deliberate exclusion of verisimilitude from the manner in which the sailor presents his recollections. The eponymous protagonist - though without identity, is merely referred to as “The Ancient Mariner”, where the adjective “Ancient” perhaps refers to wisdom gained from time, however his outstanding features imply otherwise: the “bright eyed mariner”, whose “glittering eye” is described frequently in the narrative, emphasizing possible insanity - which is supported when even the wedding guest refers to him simply as a “grey-beard loon”. His cryptic presence leaves the seafarer's past open to the interpretation of the readers, however Coleridge deliberately ensures that both the...