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Coleridge’s Poetry

To understand where “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” sits in relation to Coleridge’s other major poems, please consult this guide, which provides an analytical overview.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

In many ways, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” could be said to prefigure the types of experiments that characterize Herman Melville’s landmark 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. Perhaps most obviously, they are both narratives of life at sea with an exaggerated focus on symbolically significant animals. But more important are the formal similarities. Though it’s a novel, Moby-Dick is often written in a self-consciously poetic style. There’s also the fact that the narrator of Melville’s novel has a scholarly side, as seen in the opening collection of epigraphs that obliquely recalls Coleridge’s use of marginal annotations. Moby-Dick also features chapters written in the style of a stage drama, much like the brief dialogue between the two voices at the beginning of Part 6.

Edgar Allan Poe, “Lenore”

In general, Poe’s poetry has a dark and moody vibe that’s similar to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In the particular case of “Lenore,” there are additional parallels that make the two poems worth examining together. For example, both poems underwent extensive revision, arriving in their final forms much later than their original composition. Both poems also have an ominous and even enigmatic tone, and they also prominently feature the motif of the evil eye.

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