CCanciani                                                VB

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Exercise 1.

a.

The protagonist of the ballad is an old sailor. He meets a man at a wedding, and he tells him his story.

The man is interested in the strange aspect of the sailor and he wants to listen what he tells him and he sits on a stone.

The old sailor starts to tell the man about his voyage: the ship sailed south easily, for many days.

the bride is already coming out of the house to go to church but the wedding-guest is compelled  to listen the sailor, because he has no other choicechoice.He is spellbound by the Mariner's tale

The sailor tells that during his voyage he went through a storm.

The sailor says that after the storm an Albatross (a sea-bird) came and he followed the ship for nine days.

In the end, the sailor tells the Wedding- guest that he killed the Albatross.

b.

• In the ballad I can identify two storylines. The first is set in the present (when the sailor tells the man about his story), and the second is set in the past (when the sailor goes back to the moments of his voyage again).

Exercise 2.

1. Coleridge doesn't describe the traits of the old sailor in detail: the description is focused only on his eyes, beard and hand.

 2. The old man does not represent a realistic man: Coleridge describes the sailor like a man reflecting the supernatural

Exercise 3.

1. At first time the journey starts with a beautiful day: the old man tells it was sunny. but later, during the day, the ship was caught in the middle of a storm. In the second part, the storm ceased, and there came mist and snow, with a cold and icy landscape.

2.  In the text, nature is represented with some personification: the description of the storm (the poet uses the subject pronoun "he") and the ice.

 3. In my opinion Coleridge present Nature in a symbolic way, according to the conventions of Romanticism.

Exercise 4.

1. In my opinion the contrast between reality and  the supernatural is conveyed by the presence of the Albatross. In the story the bird represents a way towards salvation