Jan 3, 2010

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Setting

There are two settings in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In the first scene an ancient mariner stops a guest at a wedding party and begins to tell his tale. The mariner's words then transport the reader on a long ocean voyage, returning to the wedding at the end of the poem. The story is probably set in the late medieval period; the town in which the action occurs is never named, although it is likely that Coleridge's audience would have pictured a British seaport, possibly London.

The mariner describes a voyage he takes as a youth from an unnamed European country to the...