2/20/13 Dr. Theresa Thompson
English 3060
Spring 2013
Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Bennett & Royle: “Voice”
“Nothing is stranger, or more familiar, than the idea of a voice…. the persistence
of identity, expressed in the singular or peculiar nature (the ‘trick’) of a person’s
voice” (71).
“the ‘reality effect’ of a speaking voice…” (74).
“the question of voice is never simple…” (77)
“literary texts not only present voices but also have things to say about what
voices are and how we might hear them.”
“there is invariably more than one
voice in a literary text.”
“importance of seeing literature as a
space in which one encounters
multiple voices….”
Or “there may be no such thing as a
voice, a single unified voice….
Rather, there is difference and
multiplicity within every voice” (78).
1 2/20/13 Voice: Lawrence Lipking’s “The Marginal Gloss.”
Critical Inquiry 3.4 (Summer 1977), 609-655.
In 1977, for perhaps the first time, Lipking’s article makes Coleridge’s
marginal gloss critically interesting.
•  “In 1817, “For the first time the strange and seemingly arbitrary happenings of the ballad
were interpreted by a civilized scholastic voice: a marginal gloss….” (614)
•  “The marginal gloss, however, responds to another frame of mind: the need to spell
everything out.…frequently serves to affirm the relation of the part to the whole” (612).
“The gloss casts an entirely new light--a kind of secondary
imagination over the poem” (614). [1817 Text 27:1-4 & gloss]
• 
The gloss familiarizes every supernatural event; it assures us,…that the
mariner is alive, sustained by a world of facts (615). [37:131-38 & gloss;
[43:195-98 & gloss]
Polyphany: Anne Williams’s “An I
for an Eye”
“The gloss thus functions dramatically as a chorus, ensuring the mood and
point of view of the spectator in accordance with the ‘pious’ and ‘sanguine’
editor’s character” (591).
“Through what is essentially a four-fold perspective, the poet achieves a refraction
and humanization of impossible events:
“the personality of
“the reactions of the
“the moralizing of the
“by implication, the
Wedding-Guest who
pious antiquarian
the Mariner
minstrel-balladeer.”
listens;
editor
who comments;
reporting;
“By following this plan the poet lent credibility to what was
becoming an obsolete vehicle, the Gothic tale of terror….”
2 2/20/13 Polyphany: Anne Williams’s “An I
for an Eye”
“But before we meet the Mariner himself we are introduced to him by the
Minstrel-Poet and the Wedding-Guest” (592). [1817 Text 27-29:1-13]
“These three descriptive terms [ancient man, glittering-eyed / bright-eyed, Mariner] are the only
ones provided by the Minstrel in Part I.”
“But he does briefly comment on the intense magnetic
power of the Mariner.” [1817 Text 29:14-32]
“We do not hear from [the Minstrel] again until the end
of Part VII.” [1817 Text 75:618-625]
“Such is the framework within which the Mariner is left to reveal himself: a
minimum of description and a comment on the effect of his narration on his
spellbound auditor.”
Bennett & Royle: “Figures and
Tropes”
“… the figurative is by no means restricted to literary texts: rather, it saturates all language… our world is
constituted figuratively,…we relate to ourselves, to other people, to the world, through figures of speech” (81).
Like Nietzsche, we rely “on the figurative to demystify language and
thus to formulate a definition of the truth.”
“Central to literary criticism and theory, then, are such questions as:
What are the effects of rhetorical figures in literary texts? What
purpose do they serve? And how do they function?”(82).
“the productive tensions of figurative language…give life to literary texts” (87).
Remember Shklovsky & Russian Formalism: defamiliarization.“figures and tropes … can make us see what is otherwise invisible, concealed
by prejudice, effaced by habit. They seek to change the world” (83).
“figurative language entails a series of displacements and substitutions which both produce and withhold the
illusion of reference” (85).
“’catachresis’, the rhetorical term for a misuse or abuse of
language” (86),
“repetition, alliteration, assonance and sibilance, syntactic inversion
or chiasmus (‘falling faintly, faintly falling’)—is a fading out, a falling
off, of language itself” (87).
3 2/20/13 Works Cited
Bennett, Andrew & Nicholas Royle. “Voice” and “Figures and Tropes.” An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and
Theory. 4th ed. 71-87. Harlow, England: Pearson, Longman, 1995, 2005.
Boulger, James D. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner--An Introduction.” Twentieth-Century Interpretations of
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 1-20. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1969.
Lipking, Lawrence. “The Marginal Gloss.” Critical Inquiry 3.4 (Summer 1977): 609-655.
Warren, Robert Penn. “A Poem of Pure Imagination: An Experiment in Reading.” Selected Essays of Robert
Penn Warren. 198-305. New York: Random House,1958. Rprnt. in Twentieth-Century Interpretations of The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. James D. Boulger, ed. 21-47. New York: Prentice Hall, 1969.
Williams, Anne. “An I for an Eye: ‘Spectral Persecution’ in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” PMLA 108.5 (October
1993), 591-604. Rpt. in Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Paul Fry, ed. 238-260. Case
Studies in Criticism Series. New York: Bedford St. Martin P, 1999.
4