英语专业毕业论文-范本-the-old-mariner’s-evolvement-in-the-rime-of-ancient-mariner.doc

毕业论文——豆丁——cool words
The Old Mariner’s Evolvement in The Rime of Ancient Mariner

中文摘要

《古舟子咏》是柯勒律治一部比较独特的作品。这是一首长诗，以歌谣的形式讲述一则故事。全诗是一个充满了奇幻之美的的航海故事。探索人生的罪与罚 问题 ，诗人把热爱宇宙的万物泛神论思想和基督教思想结合起来，宣传仁爱和基督教的赎罪思想。在这部作品中 ,老水手是贯穿始末的主人公、核心人物。无意间射杀了一只信天翁—所谓的“神鸟” ,造就了一次刻骨铭心的海上经历。懊悔与自责使那位曾经天真烂漫的小水手,性格与心理慢慢发生严重扭曲 ,以致发展到作品中的老水手 ,整日无所事事,借不断向路人讲述那次不平凡的海上经历而度日,来减轻自己的罪恶感 ,慰藉自己忏悔的心灵。
本文先简述《古舟子咏》这首诗歌的内容和写作特点，以及作者柯勒律治的写作风格；接着从心理活动的角度出发，总结主人公--老水手的心理演变历程；然后结合心理变化分析老水手的性格特征，使读者更加明白为什么说柯勒律治笔下的老水手踏上了一条不归路。

关键词：老水手；心理演变；性格变化

Acknowledgements

In writing this paper, I have benefited from the presence of my classmates. They generously helped me collect materials I needed and gave me many invaluable suggestions. I hereby extend my great thanks to them for their kind help, without which the paper would not have been what it is.
Particularly, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor ###, for his constant encouragement and guidance. He has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. Without his consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form. I also wish to sincerely thank my friends, whose brilliant ideas and perceptive observations have proved immensely constructive.
Thirdly, my thanks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me through out these years. They always share my weal and woe. I feel much grateful and want to share my achievement with them.
Lastly, none of this would have been possible without the help of those individuals and organizations hereafter mentioned with gratitude: our school library and its staff, the library of Henan University of Technology.

Abstract

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is unique among Coleridge’s important works. It is a long poem, telling a story in the form of ballads .The poem can be approached as a dream voyage to another realm, as a story of sin and expatiation, or as the quiet essential representation of the alienated isolated modern individual. It displays the basic Christian creed of original sin. In The Rime of Ancient Mariner, the old mariner is the hero and core figure throughout the story. Accidentally, he shot and killed an albatross, the so-called Bird, creating an unforgettable experience at sea. Thanks to regret and remorse, the old mariner who was used to be innocent, was inclined to undergoing serious distortions of personality and mind. He spent all day doing nothing, and tried to alleviate his guilt by the aid of telling passengers about this extraordinary experience, which was aimed at comforting the heart of repentance.
The old mariner struggles to understand his experience by means of his moral framework but cannot, with the result that his experience seems irrational. With the aim to illustrate how the old mariner set foot on no-return road, the paper summarizes and analyses the evolution of his psychology as well as personality alternation.

Key Words: the old mariner; psychological transformation; personality alternation

Contents

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………..
i
Abstract (English)…………………………………………………………………
ii
Abstract (Chinese)…………………………………………………………………
iii
1.
Introduction………………………………………….………………………
1

1.1 The author……………………………………………………………..
1

1.2 Background of the poem………………………………………………
1
2.
Analysis of the poem …….……………………………………………… …
3

2.1
Brief summary……………………... ……………………………… ..
3

2.2
Writing skills………………………………………………………….
3

2.3
Writing pattern…………………………………………………………
4
3.
The old mariner’s psychological transformation……………………………
4

3.1
Psychological alienation………………………………………………
4

3.1.1 Sense of guilty…………………………………………………...
4

3.1.2 Agony, loneliness and fear………………………………………
5

3.2
Psychological transformation………………………………………….
6

3.2.1 Reacquisition of the ability to pray………………………………
6

3.2.2 Request for forgiveness…………………………………………
7
4.
The old mariner’s personality alternation……………………………………
8

4.1 Depression……………………………………………………………
8

4.2 Void……………………………………………………………………
8

4.3 Negativity……………………………………………………………
8

4.4 Extreme………………………………………………………………..
9
5.
Conclusion………………………………………………………………….
9
Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….
11

1. Introduction
1.1The author
Born in Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire England, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was the youngest of 10 children born to John Coleridge, a minister, and his wife, Ann Bowden. In this crowed household, it was reported that Coleridge led to a less than idyllic childhood. It was made worse in 1781 by the death of his father, a man he idolized. He was sent to study at a London charity school and eventually stayed with a maternal uncle. As an adolescent, Coleridge lost two of his siblings. He himself became ill, and it is believed that his use of Laudanum, which was a commonly used drug at the time, may have set him on the road to addiction. Later in his life he would be identified as an opium abuser, and he stated his most famous poems, which were inspired by visions. Under the influence stated above, a prevail feeling of guilt or dread obtained Coleridge’s mind, which is manifested in The Rime of Ancient Mariner obviously.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement. He was one of the most influential English literary critics and philosophers of the 19th century. Coleridge’s actual achievement as poet can be divided into two remarkably diverse groups: the demonic poem and the conversational poem. Mysticism and demonism with strong imagination are the distinctive features of this group. The Rime of Ancient Mariner is considered to be one of his best conversational poems.
Philosophically and critically, Coleridge opposed the limitedly rationalistic trends of the 18th-century thought. He advocated a more spiritual and religious interpretation of life, based on what he had learnt from Kant and Schelling. He believed that art is the only permanent revelation of the nature of reality. He sings highly Wordsworth’s “purity of language”, “deep and subtle thoughts”, “Perfect truth to nature” and his “imaginative power”. But he denies Wordsworth’s claim that there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language spoken by common people. Coleridge was esteemed by some of his contemporaries and is generally recognized today as a lyrical poet and literary critic of the first rank.
1.2 Background of the poem
The poem may have been inspired by James Cook’s second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge’s tutor, William Wales, was the astronomer on Cook’s flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On his second voyage Cook plunged repeatedly below the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent existed. Critics have also realized that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James’s account of hardship and lamentation in writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. According to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset in the spring of 1798. The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea (1726), by Captain George Shelvocke. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross:

We all observed, that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the straights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albatross, who accompanied us for several days ..., till Hattley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagined, from his color, that it might be some ill omen. ... He, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albatross, not doubting we should have a fair wind after it.

As they discussed Shelvocke’s book, Wordsworth proffered the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits: “Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.” By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape.
Bernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.
The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgment Day for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion, and of the Flying Dutchman.
2. Analysis of the poem
2.1 Brief summary
The Rime of Ancient Mariner relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long voyage. The mariner’s tale begins with his trip departing on its journey. Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven south off course by a storm and eventually reaches Antarctic. An albatross appears and leads them out of the Antarctic. One day, however, the old mariner shot and killed it inadvertently. Then, things begin to go awry. Life-in-Death won the old mariner’s soul and other sailors were left to death. He was unable to bear the sight of dead men, each of whom glared at him with the malice of their final curse. For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. The old mariner blessed the great water snakes in his heart, at that moment, he found himself able to pray. When he fell asleep, bright angels appeared standing over every corpse and waved silently to the shore, serving as beacons to guide the ship home. Henceforce, he told the story to whom he encountered as a way of altering common people:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

2.2 Writing skills
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but, occasionally, as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimester. (There are exceptions: In a five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme, though again there are many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an internal rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.
2.3 Writing pattern
The poem’s charm does not lie in the love theme of salvation, but in a peculiar and magnificent imagination. By the aid of mysterious power, this poem has seized readers’ attention. Though Coleridge did not navigate, he was able to make sights of the ocean live in his work with help of subtle tone. Despite light rain and gentle breezes, the poem also depicts strong gale and torrential down pour. Female dragons and light spirits accompany those sailors all the way from cold and frozen Antarctic to burning hot North Pacific. Coleridge made details and extraordinary poet imagination intertwined, showing his principle published in Literary Biography. Through natural and lifelike image together with description of environment, the author made supernatural, sacred and romantic contents credible while reading. The poem is filled with lyrical sections.
3. The old mariner’s psychological transformation
In The Rime of Ancient Mariner, the old mariner is the hero and core figure throughout the story. Accidentally, he shot and killed an albatross, the so-called Bird, creating an unforgettable experience at sea. Thanks to regret and remorse, the old mariner who was used to be innocent, was inclined to undergoing serious distortions of personality and mind. He spent all day doing nothing, and tried to alleviate his guilt by the aid of telling passengers about this extraordinary experience, which was aimed at comforting the heart of repentance.
A literary work focuses on portraying figures. The author grasped the character of the old mariner, and analyzed his inner world carefully.
3.1 Psychological alienation
3.1.1 Sense of guilty
The old mariner is the poem’s protagonist. He is unnaturally old, with skinny, deeply-tanned limbs and a “glittering eye”. He set sail from his native country with two hundred other men who were all saved from a strange, icy patch of ocean when they were kind to an albatross. Impulsively and inexplicably, the old mariner shot the albatross with his crossbow. Pantheism advocates that god is ubiquitous, and the myriad things are representations of god. This claims that: God is equal to all things and everything is God. Both world and things are really intangible. Under the control of those thought, the author took the albatross as Christianity’s apostle. Nonetheless, the old mariner killed the albatross, which represents that he had refused gift donated by society. He got rid of things that love him deeply and represent super nature. Besides, he removed the feelings of world. Shooting the albatross means violating guide of god and breaking laws of nature, which is doomed to be punished.
Then, other sailors died left the old mariner alive alone. Consequently, the old mariner felt guilty for his mistake. He regretted starting the journey, and believed that everyone would survive if he had not killed the albatross. In this way, a seemingly small act causes unforgivable crime. So he reproached and kept on blaming himself for killing the albatross. He was forced to undergo a painful psychological experience that nobody can understand, which makes the old mariner smitten by deep remorse.
3.1.2 Agony, loneliness and fear
The crime aroused the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship “from the land of mist and snow”. The south wind which had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it was becalmed:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Here, the sailors blamed the old mariner