Critically explain Coleridge’s idea of imagination with reference to The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner.
Imagination is defined
as the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is
not actually present to the senses. Albert Einstein claimed, “Imagination is
more important than knowledge” for the power of the imagination is endless.
This is why the imagination was considered of upmost importance in the Romantic
era. To the
Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of
everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived
God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both
wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to
nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the
imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the
supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.
The Ancient
Mariner deals heavily with the
supernatural throughout the poem and several of the acts that take place could
be put down to the imagination. For instance the Ancient Mariner detects
spirits in their pure form several times throughout the poem, yet they talk
only about him, not to him and then when the ghost ship carrying Death and
Life-in-Death sails by, the Ancient Mariner overhears them gambling.
