MonkeyFraggle7-Final Exam Post- pd.3
Rime of The Ancient Who Now?
Introduction to the Madness
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge opens with a Seaman approaching guests on a beach and stopping them from attending a wedding by telling the guest about his past sins, and the whole work acts as a kind of message on not being able to escape past wrongdoings and the lasting impacts of needless cruelty. Coleridge utilizes Intertextuality, Fragmentation, and Clarity of prose to exhibit the constant struggle humans face against our own malicious nature.
One- Intertextuality and the like
Coleridge makes many references to Greek mythology, the Bible, and folklore that add to the narrative but where this really stands out is in part 7 of Rime. The Folklore connection is the idea that to shoot an albatross was to bring bad luck to the crew of the boat where the shooter was as an albatross held the soul of a man lost at sea, which relates to the romantic quality of the sublime. The sublime is when we allow our emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder of creation.
Links to Rime
“Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round; And ll was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit. (Coleridge VII)
“Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The boat spun round and round;”
imagery creates a sense of disorientation and danger. However, amidst this chaos, there is a sudden stillness, contrasting sharply with the previous event. The contrast between chaos and calm heightens the tension and drama of the scene.
"save that the hill Was telling of the sound"
personifies the natural world, suggesting that even in the stillness, there is a sense of the landscape being animated or responsive to the events unfolding.
adds depth to the setting and imbues the scene with a sense of eerie atmosphere
“the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit”
The Pilot's shriek and subsequent fit suggest a moment of terror or shock in response to the unfolding events, emphasizing the overwhelming nature of the situation.
a loss of control over his faculties
“ The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit.”
The holy Hermit responds by demonstrating a sense of faith and perhaps resignation to the divine will.
Hermits are often associated with solitude, spirituality, and wisdom.
The fact that he is described as "holy" suggests a connection to the divine or supernatural realm
prayer amidst the chaos could symbolize a steadfastness of faith in the face of adversity, serving as a contrast to the fear and panic exhibited by others.
the noise of the sinking ship to the silence that follows
emphasis on sound
Overall, Mariner's actions may seem futile or insignificant in the face of the overwhelming power of the natural world; they also reflect his resilience and determination to assert his will despite the forces arrayed against him.
Links to Red pyramid
(Full rambling Source #3 - Postmodernist Essays & Fiction)
Radiohead is something of an icon of Alt Rock groups, and rightfully so, but in order to really experience it , you have to sacrifice understanding it.
Lines like "Jumped in the river, what did I see?" and "Black-eyed angels swam with me" evoke imagery of confronting mortality and the unknown.The song's lyrics are filled with mystical and spiritual imagery, with references to angels, gods, and rivers. These elements may symbolize a journey of the soul or an exploration of metaphysical concepts.The imagery of water, particularly the river, recurs throughout the song and may symbolize themes of purification, renewal, or the passage of time. It could also represent the subconscious mind or the depths of human experience.In Egyptian mythology, the pyramid symbolizes death and rebirth, which could tie into the song's themes of mortality and transcendence.
My take
Coleridge and other authors throughout literary movements whether it be romanticism, postmodernism or any other style of writing utilize intertextuality for many purposes. But referencing and alluding to other well-known works the author's work will be seen as more credible because people naturally like what feels familiar and this let's their work be more widespread since it's not entirely new and daunting.
Fun fact pit stop! Around 1798 Coleridge got more into political ideology discussions after the French revolutionary government suppressed the Switzerland state. Especially in these works you can see how the British romantic movement took off in the use of writing with emotion (read the odes here: France. An Ode by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry)
Two- Fragmentation
Fragmentation is essentially the literary practice of using multiple perspectives at once or telling a story in a non-linearly chronological order. what this does is confuse the reader (at least in my case) but what it was meant to do is provide the reader with multiple views since postmodern writers didn't like a single unitary voice to portray a whole story. There are rumors in the literary nerd world about great poets, such as Coleridge, Shelly, and Byron suffering from a type of bipolar disorder and looking through that lens you see a different side to their creative writing. Maybe this mental illness could have contributed to the start of fragmented writing (for more on this read Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament).
Links to Rime
the 1817 version of “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” foreshadows modernist concerns of fragmentation as well as postmod techniques.
The narrative accounts emphasize the function, or rather dysfunction, of communication. No one in the poem, not the Mariner, not the Wedding-Guest, not the Minstrel or the reader seems capable of saying precisely what they mean. The people that populate the poem cannot communicate properly with each other, but the Mariner is necessitated to ceaselessly repeat his autobiography, and those he confesses to are compelled to listen.
The second appearance of dialogue in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is between the two voices in Part VI.
“First Voice: “But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the Ocean doing?”
Second Voice: “Still as a slave before his lord,
The Ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—"
The Minstrel does not describe the two voices; instead, they are portrayed as a compelling dialogue. This disruptive device throws the reader off balance once more because it doesn't explain why the exegetic mode shifts from a dramatic conversation to a narrated lyric. By deleting the poem's narrator, this technique aims to strengthen the bond between the reader and the Mariner.
Links to Semantics
(My full break down, with the help of Big nerd Source #2 - Postmodernist Essays & Fiction)
The album, Brat, is a weird little number that “sounds like a man marinating in his own brain juice and loneliness” (fun right?). “I used to have friends,” Nnamdi declares in a nasal autotuned whine on “Semantics.” His own multi-tracked voice answered back, “I did it myself.” It’s a goofily melancholic, or melancholically goofy—the bittersweet triumph of being trapped in your own skull. Noah Berlatsky From Above the Fold writes more in detail about the album in an interview with Nnamdi, read the full article here: Nnamdi recorded his album from isolation—before solitude was everyday life.
Multiple voices and a type of conversation or back and forth between the author and himself is a type of fragmentation not typically seen in romantic literature but it is still the same idea.
My take
Coleridge May have suffered from some type of mental disorder and this could have contributed to his writing style. Whether or not this is true, it's evident that the postmodern style of fragmentation would not have been as successful if romantic authors didn't first take the risk.
Fun fact pit stop! Around 1798 Coleridge got more into political ideology discussions after the French revolutionary government suppressed the Switzerland state. Especially in these works you can see how the British romantic movement took off in the use of writing with emotion (read the odes here: France. An Ode by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry)
Three- Clarity of Prose
Clarity of prose is basically the practice of using more simplistic language than you would usually see in literature of this type but doing so intentionally. By writing simply the author allows the reader to focus on the often more complicated meaning than what it originally seems and makes the work more accessible to people of different literary education.
Links to Rime
This line is quite simplistic not only because it's a moment of extreme emotion in the story but because Coleridge wants the magnitude of the action to be the focus .
“Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS!” (Coleridge ll)
“Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist.” (Coleridge ll)
"Then all averred,”
Suggests a collective agreement or consensus among the people present.
It implies unanimity or widespread agreement among those present, emphasizing the weight of the accusation against the speaker.
The use of the past tense "averred" suggests that this agreement occurred at some point in the past, adding a sense of retrospection to the narrative.
“I had killed the bird"
It implies that the speaker is being blamed or held responsible for a significant event, namely the disappearance of the bird.
Suggests a sense of guilt or culpability on the part of the speaker, indicating that they are being held responsible for the bird's demise.
"That brought the fog and mist"
Attributes a supernatural or mystical quality to the bird, indicating that its presence or absence has a profound effect on the environment.
The line introduces a supernatural or mythic element to the narrative, hinting at a deeper significance behind the bird's presence or absence.
Overall: The line suggests a belief in cause and effect, with the bird's disappearance being linked to the arrival of fog and mist, emphasizing a perceived connection between natural phenomena and human actions.
Links to Sink Monkey
(My full ramblings here Source #1 - Postmodernist Essays & Fiction)
So we open the story with a woman laying in bed watching a video of a monkey getting a bath and thinking about how she has been bleeding all day. She says, “Sink Monkey is the only way I’ve been able to imagine going through with the pregnancy. Whenever I pictured a human child, I felt nothing”, she cannot relate to the child inside her but she feels such deep affection for this monkey that it's all that holds her together (little weird but just stick with me). She ignores texts from her friends and contemplates how much her and Ethan, the father, didn't want a child, weighing it against the reality that she no longer has one. The story is written in uber easy language which makes it simple to understand. The author wants the complexity of the piece to be in the meaning rather than wording, making it accessible to all. It would be weird to make such a vulnerable story difficult to read as it defeats the whole purpose. This postmodern element dispenses with elaborate and descriptive language to present a story in a simple and effective manner. And that's exactly what Proujansky accomplishes. By making the words easy readers are forced to grapple with the deeper meaning.
My take
Authors use Clarity of Pros because people tend to over-complicate things. the authors don't want their message to be misconstrued so they make their writing as simple as possible to hopefully lead readers onto the same train of thought that they are.
Conclusion
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when humans have the opportunity to screw up we will.
There is a never-ending struggle between what the greedy part of the human soul wants and what society has conditioned us to do. This urge has been studied and theorized for a millennium. Psychoanalytic psychologist would argue that Freud explained it perfectly with the difference between the Id, Ego and Superego (wrong) And biblical Scholars would say it's all Eve's fault for committing the person (because humanity's downfall is obviously woman's fault) but the source doesn't matter.What I think matters is that we're having discussion on it. Authors across literary movements and time have brought natural greed and poetry to the attention of discussion and the only way to understand if there is a way why humans are the way we are is to provide contradicting theories and evidence and reasoning for it, which I think Coleridge and postmodern authors do.
So, what do you think?
