Rereading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner as an allegorical poem, a ballad with Ecocritical touch

Abstract

In recent times many critics view Samuel Taylor Coleridge epoch-making work ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ from many different perspectives. This paper mainly tends to unify all major perspectives of critics in one single reading. 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' as a supernatural poem, a lyrical ballad, a Christian allegory of sin, sufferings and exploitation leading to spiritual elimination along with ecocritical conscious with which ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ recently associated by the Eco critics and environmentalist. Within the structural framework of seven parts, the poem is formally designed as a romantic lyrical ballad in which the basic ingredients of medieval gothic ballad tradition are satisfactory found how an adventurous journey change into a journey of sin and how the mariner harm the natural world and how he realises his sin and bent before God for forgiveness. The main motto of this paper is to discuss the above mention aspects of the poem which can give a new light to the poem as well as to bring forth the poetic genius of Coleridge.