ENGL 1F95 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Biographia Literaria, Lyrical Ballads, Morley Callaghan
26 Apr 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Engl 1f95 literature in english: forms, themes, approaches. Whatever might be the source of the bird that appears, and coleridge leaves this mysterious, the poem"s albatross comes to the mariners as a free gift. They hail it in god"s name as if it were human; they domesticate it with their food, which it has never eaten before; they play with it as if it were a child or a pet. Very directly they associate it with their luck, for now the ice splits, a south wind springs up, and they start the journey northward back to the ordinary world. The poem"s first great event is suddenly placed before us; without apparent premeditation or conscious motive, the narrator murders the albatross. The murder is a gratuitous act, but then so is the initial appearance of the bird. Coleridge"s mariner belongs to this tradition whose dark ancestors include cain, the wandering.
