Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Overview

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [RL 10 IL 10-12] A sailor kills a good-luck omen—an albatross. Theme: consequences of disrespect for life. 52 pages. Tale Blazers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780895986726
Publisher:	Perfection Learning Corporation
Publication date:	01/28/2000
Series:	Tale Blazers
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	51
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	7 - 14 Years

About the Author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in the English town of Ottery St Mary, where his father was a vicar, in 1772. The youngest of ten children, he attended school with Charles Lamb and spent two years at Jesus College, Cambridge where he was introduced to radical politics and theology by the poet Robert Southey. He first met William Wordsworth in 1795 and they published a joint poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798; this highly praised volume, which started the English Romantic Movement, contained the first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Alongside finding success with his poetry, Coleridge’s critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential. However much of his life was blighted by illness, opium addiction, financial problems and depression. He died of heart failure in London in 1834.

Table of Contents

To the Author of 'The Robbers' [sonnet; 1794?]
Sonnet: To a Friend Who Asked, How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me [1796]
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison [1797]
The Dungeon [1797]
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1797-98, revised later; marginal glosses added 1815-16]
On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country [No. III of 'Sonnets Attempted in the Manner of Contemporary Writers,' 1797]
Christabel [Part 1, 1797; Part II, 1800; 'The Conclusion to Part II,' 1801]
Frost at Midnight [1798]
France: An Ode [1798]
Lewti; or, The Circassian Love-Chaunt [1798]
Fears in Solitude [1798]
The Nightingale [1798]
Kubla Khan [1798]
The Ovidian Elegiac Metre [1799]
Something Childish, but Very Natural [1799]
Love [1799]
Dejection: An Ode [1802]
The Pains of Sleep [1803]
To William Wordsworth [1807]
The Knight's Tomb [1817?]
On Donne's Poetry [1818?]
Youth and Age [1823, with additions in 1832]
Cologne [1828]

Editorial Reviews

Intended as a college-level introduction to the poem, this volume presents the 1798 and 1817 versions side by side, followed by five different critical approaches of the poem (reader-response, Marxist, New Historical, psychoanalytic, and deconstructivist) with discussion of each theoretical treatment. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

The late James Mason chillingly renders Coleridge's 1798 verse fable, THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. In rhyming couplets, an old salt tells a passing stranger of how his killing an albatross on a sea voyage led to the deaths of his crew mates and other supernatural horrors. Aside from its mystical significance and poetic brilliance, the mariner's tale is something to scare Boy Scouts with at a late night camp-out. Mason delivers that scary yarn aspect as well as other virtues in the sonorous tones for which he is justly famous. Likewise, Roy Dotrice throws himself into Lewis Carroll's mock heroic HUNTING OF THE SNARK (1867), a perfect complement--or antidote--to MARINER. Dotrice possessed some of the same skills as Mason--a beautiful voice, elegance, and a seemingly effortless skill. As exhibited here, he also can let loose with plenty of delightful silliness. This volume, like the poems themselves, will engage both children and adults. Y.R. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

DEC 02/JAN 03 - AudioFile