Gathering and Scattering in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: Poetic Form, Biblical Criticism, and Coleridge’s Tropes of the Imagination

Abstract

ABSTRACTSituating the theoretical preoccupation with unity and division that underpins Coleridge’s theory of the imagination in relation to his critical appreciation for the Bible as literature, the following essay examines Coleridge’s incorporation of biblical forms within his own poetry. In the particular case of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge figures the imagination’s functions of gathering and scattering through three tropes that adapt the parallelism of biblical poetry: chiasmus, synesthesia, and merismus. Through the inverted sequences of chiasmus, sensory combinations of synesthesia, and condensed pairings of merismus, “The Ancient Mariner” recalls and revises various biblical accounts of the creation and ordering of the cosmos. These tropes work to question the dominion assigned to humankind in the Genesis creation myths by evoking the sublimity of the natural world expressed in the divine speeches of the Book of Job. Coleridge’s imaginative engagement with scripture in “The Ancient Mariner” thereby shows that the creation stories in Genesis and the survey of nature in Job depend not merely on narrative but, more particularly, on poetic form.