The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The mariner as text • The ballad-measure: a fictitious speaker beings his rime by story telling that the poem’s constitution is give from the mariner’s “discourse.” • The discourse between mariner and wedding guest: a set of codes of enigma rising with the proceeding storyline: “who is the mariner?”“what is the story about?” • Whenever the mariner repeats his story, the poem is dealing with reconstitution of the mariner’s identity within the discourse that produce meanings.

2. The Vision of Sea The first imprisonment: a sea of ice • The crew at the first time encounter the malice of nature operating as a prison. The mariner: on less than a member of human community • The imprisonment is temporal; Albatross frees the ship. The second imprisonment: a silent sea • Visionary elements: physical  psychological imprisonment “a painted ship in the painted sea” • The splitting of the mariner: the poem now is dealing with the fate of a individual human being.  Albatross hanging on the mariner’s neck

3. The Vision of Sea: Outcast Hero Shooting Albatross: the gratuitous act • This motiveless act heightens a sense of identity: “motive has no concern; the person who performs it matters”  the mariner apart from his crew • The motiveless malevolence positions mariner in the genealogy of literary figures: Shakespeare’s Iago, Milton’s Satan . . .  a wanderer, a man with chain, a rule breaker • In the pure but emptied act, the mariner is deprived of his “guilt,” the pure crime of a pure murderer. “The mariner is a killer”“The mariner is a outcast”

4. The Vision of Sea: Crucifixion • The mariner: a victim as Albatross The prison works in concert with Albatross whose blood reddened the sea.  “The bloody sun” “water…still and awful red”  The mariner “bit my arm, I sucked the blood” • The mariner: embodiment of crucifixion Albatross on the mariner’s neck as Jesus on the cross  Albatross: a holy bird, an “Christian Soul”  Mariner: a container, a presence of crucifixion

5. The Vision of Ship Transfiguration of a Spectre-Bark • Mariner’s ship: a second-scale prison “the painted ship in the painted sea” • The Spectre-bark: a dungeon with fire “ . . . was flecked with bars”“a dungeon-grate he peered”  mariner’s ship coincides the spectre-bark Transfiguration of Life-in-Death • Mariner: Life-in-Death mariner turns to be Life-in-Death, a emptied self  human body (Life-in-Death) as prison-measure

6. Reconstitution of the Mariner • The Steps in the Two visions The silent sea: mariner outcast  container The spectre-bark: prisoner repressed imprisoned body • The mariner as text The mariner “does not act but is continually acted upon.” The mariner as no-self, functional means to connect acts and things in the fluid dissolve of imagination