Doc Yoder's Notes
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (originally published 1798 in Lyrical Ballads; notes here are to 1817 edition in Sibylline Leaves)

Contexts:

• ballads: based on the Mariner what were the traditional ballads like?
• frame tales
• fantastic travelogue (cf. Gulliver's Travels, Odyssey, Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
• the gothic -- one of the kinds of lit WW criticizes in the Preface

Points at which the reader's interpretation is more subtly manipulated:

1. ll. 97-102: the 24 hour darkness is a natural phenomenon, but is interpreted as divine retribution; how much of the other signs are really natural
2. ll. 220-223: the mariner says that the souls passed him "like" the whizz of his crossbow-- again this is about the mind's making meaning, the simile marks the mariner's subjective association, not an objective fact of the case

Interruptions on the Mariner's Tale (1817):

Pt. I

• ll. 10-21
• ll. 31-49
• ll. 79-81

• ll. 228-233

• l. 349

• ll. 595-600: apparently the Mariner, but could be the wedding guest
• ll. 621: last line of the mariner's tale

On the author of the gloss

Pt. I

• up to about l. 70, the glosser provides a good summary of the facts of the poem
• the gloss at l. 71 begins the glosser's more revealing interpretation; the glosser is the first to see the albatross as an omen; his interpretation coincides with the crew's at ll. 91-96

• at l. 97 the glosser departs from the crew's interpretation when they become "accomplices" in the Mariner's crime
• l. 120: it is the glosser who claims that the doldrums are a vengeance
• l. 131: the longest gloss yet; the glosser apparently has a variety of obscure knowledge about spirits, and apparently believes in them; also, a pattern becomes visible in which the glosser solidifies certain innuendoes, implications, suggestions, etc. that would otherwise remain rather nebulous

• l. 147: the glosser first interprets the "something in the sky" (the death ship) as a "sign"
• l. 199: the glosser takes up a regal metaphor: "No twilight within the courts of the sun"

• l. 230: the glosser first sees the events on the ship as "penance"
• ll. 236-243: some room for play between the gloss and text
• l. 263: the long, elaborate gloss about the journeying sun and moon who enter their native lands like lords; royal metaphor, astrology?, a least a personification of the heavenly bodies

• l. 297: the glosser agrees with the Mariner's interpretation of the rain as being sent from the Virgin Mary
• l. 345: the glosser on the inspiriting of the dead men, adds that the spirits were "sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint"
• l. 377: the glosser adds that the spirit still "requireth vengeance"
• by l. 393 the glosser has demonstrated a facility with the various realms of spirits, daemons, etc.; is this person typical of certain religious sects?

• ll. 422-429: the glosser seems to reverse the cause/effect; the poem says that the ship will go more slowly when the Mariner comes out of his trance; the glosser says that the trance is caused by the motion of the ship
• l. 430: the glosser interprets the Mariner's trance as a respite from his penance; this suggests that the penance is perceptual rather than objective
• l. 482: the glosser anticipates the action by about 2 stanzas