The ballad form, a narrative poem popular
throughout the 19th century, is used by Coleridge to convey the tale
of a mariner’s plight to survive alone at sea, facing the wrath of Mother
Nature, after the murder of an albatross. This form typically has a certain
structure of quatrain stanzas of alternating three or four stress lines. This
four-line structure can be seen as constricting except Coleridge uses the basic
form only as a framework and often moves to six lines in each stanza.
(For more information
regarding stress lines and reading a poem’s metre, click here)
This ballad is written in the first person
from the Mariner’s perspective. This
unreliable narrator, much like Nick in The
Great Gatsby, is a limiting factor
as the Mariner’s own views and opinions bias the information given to both the
reader and the wedding guest.
Although an omniscient narrator would provide
an unbiased account of the Mariner’s trials and tribulations, the Mariner’s
journey would become less personal and the overall message aimed at the reader
to ‘loveth best all things great and small’ may lose significance when lacking
the Mariner’s personal response to the events taking place throughout.
The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner has been criticised
for being archaic, Coleridge often using
made up words with no meaning (making it super difficult for the likes of us!) ;
it is stated in the British Critic that words such as ‘swound’ or ‘weft’ are
nonsensical and ‘could be removed without detriment to the poem’. It could be
argued, however, that Coleridge used these words to convey a sense of confusion
and desperation – that the Mariner was distressed, starving and unable to die.
The ballad was written
specifically to be published in ‘the collection of lyrical ballads’ with
William Wordsworth but The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner was then rewritten by Coleridge in the second edition of
‘lyrical ballads’ in 1800. Some of these archaic words were missing from this
and also a preface was added explaining the poetical concept of the collection.
This could either be interpreted that the pressure from such critics forced
Coleridge to delete the ‘nonsensical’ words even though they were to create a
certain effect or that such criticism enlightened him to the fact that their
loss would cause ‘no detriment to the poem’ and were best left out.
Using a literary balled for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner enables
Coleridge to work within a structure and recognised form as it became more
popular with the rise of romanticism. Like The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Keats’s La
Belle Dame Sans Merci is also a literary ballad, although shorter and less
elaborate than Coleridge’s, it creates a sense of mystery by revealing very
little information about the characters. If, in fact Coleridge’s use of the
ballad form limits the reader’s interest in the tale as a whole then the same
would apply for La Belle Dame Sans Merci as
its structure is fundamentally the same, split into parts of quatrain stanzas
and told mostly in first person from the protagonist’s point of view; the knight
‘met a lady in the meads’ this ballad also working better with an unreliable
narrator to convey a certain theme or moral.
The different parts of the rime are clearly
defined and each end in a cliff-hanger to increase the dramatic effect of the
poem. The separate parts work in the same way chapters do in a novel; the first
part ending in, ‘with my crossbow/ I shot the albatross’ this cliff-hanger
keeps the reader interested. The use of romantic imagery, for example where ‘a
spring of love gushed from [his] heart’ also enhances rather than limits the
reader’s interest in the Mariner’s tale. The limitations of the ballad form
being a strict rhyming structure and split into clearly defined parts each with
a dramatic ending does not override the poetry within and the overall storyline
but instead is a technique used to portray the message Coleridge conveys to the
reader.
For more information about
the Ballad as a poetic device, see here.
Extra bonus:
Iron Maiden. Need I say more. Turn it up to eleven, guys.
