EXTEND – The Mariner’s burden

Complete the text about the structure of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with the words given.

An important feature of the poem is the ________, a device that sets the ________ scene of a guest on his way to a wedding stopped by the Mariner. This initial encounter establishes a ________ setting, which helps the reader engage with the ________ story that follows. This technique is often linked to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's concept of the 'suspension of ________', which allows the reader to temporarily set aside their critical judgment to accept the supernatural events of the ________ narrative.
By returning to the ________ frame at the end, the poem brings the reader back to the ________ world, to deal, alongside the wedding guest, with the profound moral and spiritual lesson learnt from the Mariner.

Read the introduction and the poem, then reorder the events. Write the correct numbers (1-11) in the gaps. The first and last have already been done for you.

1 The Mariner tells the Hermit his tale so as to feel lighter and free.   ________
2 The Pilot's boy laughs wildly and accuses the Mariner of being the Devil.    ________
3 The Mariner and the Hermit step onto firm land.     ________
4 The Hermit asks the Mariner to identify himself.     ________
5 The Mariner explains his need to wander from land to land, sharing his story with those he knows must hear it.   ________
6 The Pilot, the pilot's boy and Hermit approach the ship in their boat.    1
7 The Mariner feels his body go numb as if he had been drowned for a week but finds himself on the pilot's boat.    ________
8 The Mariner tells the wedding guest that one must love all creatures.    ________
9 The ship sinks with a loud, rumbling sound.     ________
10 The Pilot faints after the Mariner moves his lips.     ________
11The wedding guest leaves the wedding, a sadder and a wiser man.    11

Read the poem again and choose the correct alternative.

1 When the Pilot sees the Mariner's ship, he ________.
2 The ship sinks ________.
3 The Pilot's boy thinks the Mariner is a ________.
4 Back on land, the Mariner asks the Hermit to ________.
5 The primary role of the Hermit in this section of the poem is to ________.
6 The wedding guest's final feelings are a mixture of ________ of nature and the divine.

Read the passage from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, which focuses on Coleridge's theory of the imagination and decide if the statements are true or false. Then look at the prompts in brackets and write some extra reflections in your exercise book. You can use the final text as revision material for your test.

The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, but co-existing with the conscious will, and which, in order to produce, must dissolve, diffuse, dissipate, in order to re-create (How might the Rime be a perfect example of the Secondary Imagination at work?); or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify. (How does Coleridge achieve this unity in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Think of the symbols at play.) It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.
Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association. (What does Fancy enable the poet to do in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?)
(From Biographia Literaria by S.T. Coleridge, 1817)