Discussion Topic
The significance of the title "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and its unique spelling in Coleridge's poem
Summary:
The title "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" signifies the mariner's tale, with "rime" being an archaic spelling of "rhyme," emphasizing the poem's ancient and timeless quality. The unique spelling reflects the poem's historical setting and the mariner's old-fashioned speech, enhancing the mystical and antiquated atmosphere of Coleridge's work.
What's the significance of the title "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and its unique spelling?
The Ancient Mariner is an allegorical figure: someone who represents humankind's innate sinfulness. He is ancient, not merely in the sense of being very old, but in the sense of going back to the very dawn of humankind. Thanks to Adam and Eve's original act of disobedience, man has been steeped in sin. That being the case, Coleridge feels it appropriate to use an archaic spelling for the word "rhyme." In doing so, he's drawing the reader's attention to the universality of his theme.
"Rime" has a further meaning in that it refers to the kind of frost that often forms on ships when it gets foggy or windy. Virtually the whole of the poem takes place on board a ship—much of it during a voyage to the Antarctic, where of course we'd expect to see quite a lot of frost. On a metaphorical level, one could also say that...
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the mariner's soul is covered with thick layers of "rime" that need to melt if he's to develop empathy for his fellow creatures.
Coleridge uses these archaic spellings in order to give the poem a more ancient feel. The mariner is supposed to live forever and every now and then detain someone whom he feels will benefit from his tale, like the wedding guest. Making the poem seem older than it is by using these archaic spellings helps to give credence to the mariner's story. The title is basically telling us the Ancient mariner has a story to tell and this is it. The Rime (or story/poem/song) of the Ancient Mariner is as follows, as the wedding guest perhaps retold it.
Rime is an archaic (old, outdated) spelling of rhyme (“poem”). When first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the poem’s original title was Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. Coleridge used many archaic words and spellings throughout the poem, including rime. In later versions of Lyrical Ballads, many of these archaic words in Rime of the Ancient Mariner were edited out, and the marginal glosses (brief explanations) were added.
Some Coleridge scholars believe that rime is also a play on the word’s other meaning: “frost.” They believe that the poem is based, in part, on the second voyage of British explorer James Cook, who ventured into the Arctic Circle in the 1770s.
What is the significance of the word "rime" in Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?
The title of Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, could have two meanings, based on the various definitions of the word "rime."
Merriam-Webster gives one definition of rime as:
In the poem's first stanza we see the Mariner's ship blown off course, southward to the Antarctic region:an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward sides of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud and built out directly against the wind.
We can imagine the ship itself covered in this ice, or rime, as it lies stuck in the ice floes near the south pole. Coleridge describes the place as filled with ice:And now there came both mist and snow,And it grew wondrous cold:And ice, mast-high, came floating by,As green as emerald.
Near the end of the this stanza, just after the ship has escaped the ice, the Mariner unaccountably shoots the albatross that many of the sailors credited as bringing the good fortune that broke them out. This sets into motion a series of misfortunes that bring the Mariner to a low, desperate, point. In a metaphorical sense, the Mariner is now covered in a symbolic rime, caused by his violent and unnecessary act.The ice was here, the ice was there,The ice was all around
When the Mariner finally makes it home, through no skill of own, he is compelled by an unseen force to wander the land and tell his story over and over again, including the following moral, which appears in the third to last stanza:
Things get a little complicated here. Keep in mind the "rime" is an earlier spelling of the more familiar "rhyme." Rhyme can also be used as a verb, meaning "to bring into harmony." The Mariner, after all of his tribulations on the sea and the weight of his guilt over killing the albatross and indirectly causing the deaths of his fellow shipmates, has been brought into harmony with God through prayer and love.He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.
References
The spelling of "rime" used in the title of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an archaic one, that was obsolete at the time the poem was written. In this work, as in many of the other poems Coleridge contributed to Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge frequently uses archaic words and spellings.
The very title of the book suggests that Coleridge and Wordsworth were returning to traditional ballads and the simple language of peasants as an alternative to what they saw as the ornate and cliched diction of the Augustans and the bombast of the Germans. This particular poem uses many of the generic conventions of the traditional ballad, including common or ballad meter, as well as many archaic word forms, to locate itself within a folkloric English tradition. The use of the archaic form "rime" in the title gives the reader an immediate clue to the generic intentions of the poem, as recalling an older style of poetry.