On 3rd September 1984, the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden released their fifth album: Powerslave.1 This recording contains a song entitled “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which was inspired by the homonymous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.2
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appeared in 1798, in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads, which is the greatest poetic outcome of the creative cooperation between Coleridge and William Wordsworth.3 The friendship between these two men stimulated both to bring out their poetic genius. As a matter of fact, Coleridge composed his best poems while he lived in direct contact with Wordsworth (1796-1799).4 Before the beginning of such a strong poetic relation, Coleridge, who had always considered himself a philosopher rather than a poet,5 had been engaged in the composition of poetic dramas about criminal psychology,6 such as The Fall of Robespierre (1794),7 or Osorio (1797).8 Moreover, he had tried to give voice to his views about politics in some periodicals: one of these, The Watchman, was published by the poet himself.9 Although those who knew him were sceptical of this new venture, on 1st March 1796 the first number of The Watchman appeared and ten issues, where Coleridge expressed his political radicalism and his criticism against the British government,10 were produced till May 1796. As most of his contemporaries – and Wordsworth was one of these11 – he hailed the spirit of the French Revolution with great enthusiasm12 and was then influenced by the revolutionary ideas of William Godwin.13 However, Robespierre’s reign of Terror in France (1793-1794)14 made him resent the extremists of the Revolution and so he became politically moderate.15 All his life was then utopian but disordered in his hopes: the perfect image of the damned poetic genius.16 In his boyhood, he was extremely versed in classic poetry and philosophy17: indeed he spent so long a time in the study of these disciplines that he ruined his health,18 and was then obliged to take laudanum as a cure. However, a long battle of his will against the habit of opium-eating, to which he became then a victim, started,19 and all his life was then made of spells of debilitating addiction and painful withdrawal. He left Jesus College at Cambridge without graduating, because of economic and sentimental reasons,20 and he started living a combination of attempts and failures.21 From his unhappy wedding with Sara Fricker (1770-1845) and his friendship with Robert Southey, to the Pantisocratic ideas, various interests in chemistry and agriculture, and a number of unsuccessful literary publications, he experienced a mixture of excitements and illusions.22
During the publication of The Watchman in 1796, Coleridge devoted considerable attention to Wordsworth’s poetry, and called him “the best poet of the age.”23 Between the end of that year and the first months of 1797, when they both settled in the same neighbourhood in the Quantocks, the friendship between them began.24 The two young men started, almost from their very first meetings, to discuss and read their latest works to each other, with criticism, praise and possible suggestions.25 They had much in common, as they both failed to graduate at Cambridge and to find a stable employment. Both had been excited by the French Revolution, and then lost their faith in democracy. Both believed in the evocative power of poetry and neither saw any limit to what he could achieve. In those years in which they had decided to flee the world to a place of retirement, they could dedicate each other to their poetical efforts.26 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner marks a crucial stage in the growth of their literary relationship and in their separate but mutually assisting search for an individual poetic theme and voice. 1797 was their annus mirabilis: the year, according to Wordsworth’s words, when they “together wantoned in wild Poesy”27: each man’s talent reached its maturity; in this period of community, each found in the other all the qualities that he had been searching for.28 There was neither rivalry nor reserve between the two men: they often wrote together and several poems by one of them showed lines or even stanzas composed by the other.29 William Hazlitt, who spent some time with Coleridge in 1798, was fascinated by the styles of the two poets: “Coleridge’s manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth’s more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical.”30
In such a period of communion, they used to talk about the nature of poetry while walking outside along the Quantocks, even after dark, and the nature around them provided some of the best images that enrich their works.31 These were the circumstances in which Lyrical Ballads were conceived.32 Coleridge recalled the creation of such a volume of poetry in a famous excerpt from his Biographia Literaria, written nearly twenty years afterwards, and published in 1817.33 He there wrote about “the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.”34 The combination of both powers, represented by “accidents of light and shade, […] moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and familiar landscape,”35 gave the definition of “the poetry of nature.”36 The composition of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was then a compromise.
The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; […] In this idea originated the plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.37
Coleridge was then to employ the supernatural as an expressive medium, or symbol, for what were then defined as romantic emotional states: fear, guilt, remorse, and aspiration to the sublime.38
On 13th November 1797,39 Dorothy Wordsworth, after a walking tour along the north Devon coast with her brother and Coleridge,40 wrote to Mary Hutchinson (1787/1788?-1863)41: “The evening was dark and cloudy, […] William and Coleridge employing themselves in laying the plan of a ballad…”42 When the two poets reached the sea, they started talking with animation in order to outline the ideas for a poem that would become known as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.43 The poem would deal with the story of a terrible crime, its expiation and the working-out of a frightening curse.44
It has been suggested that Coleridge’s poem may be read as a miniature epic or a dramatic monologue; in fact, Homer’s Odissey, Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Divina Commedia, which inspired the pattern of the spiritual voyage from sin and ignorance to knowledge and forgiveness, are considered as some of the main sources45; and some rhetorical devices, such as the use of epithets in naming the Mariner, “grey-beard loon!” (line 11)46 or “the bright-eyed Mariner” (line 20),47 recall Homer’s or Dante’s style. However, there is no doubt that The Rime is, first and foremost, a ballad.48 As Coleridge later suggested,49 the plot stemmed from a strange dream of John Cruikshank (one of Coleridge’s neighbours), haunted by a huge skeleton ship,50 while most images of the sea, nautical information and exotic natural phenomena were learnt from the pages of earlier explorers’ memoirs of their voyages.51 Wordsworth, who had read some days earlier George Shelvocke’s A Voyage round the World, by way of the Great South Sea (1726),52 provided some of the most significant images and ideas, such as the ominous killing of the albatross53; indeed in his Memoirs he recalled: “The idea of shooting an albatross was mine; for I had been reading Shelvocke’s Voyages, which probably Coleridge never saw.”54 As the two men had begun composing together,55 Wordsworth furnished some couplets at the beginning of the ballad,56 in particular:
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
(lines 15-16).57
However, Coleridge continued writing alone and within a week he completed almost half of the finished poem58: the plan of a simply horror poem, inspired by such works as Bürger’s Lenore (1774)59 or Lewis’s Alonzo The Brave And Fair Imogine (1796)60 and aiming at earning 5 pounds from the Monthly Magazine,61 developed into a richly complex story, with multiple meanings.62
In writing a ballad, the two poets meant to catch the popular taste of the time, which was much concerned with supernatural tales,63 as a consequence of the spread of Gothic fiction in the previous years.64 New interests were given to the simple forms of ancient English poetry, as a sort of opposition to the artificiality of much eighteenth-century verse, and a great number of writers had already written imitations of old ballads in those years,65 as Walter Scott (1771-1832)66 would do in 1802 with his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders.67 The Ancient Mariner, as originally published, was meant to be self-consciously archaic, from the use of the typical meter of English medieval ballads (quatrains with alternate tetrameters and trimeters, though Coleridge often relieves the monotony of this measure by extending his stanzas to five or six, and in one case, nine lines),68 to some antiquated spellings and forms of speech. The poet exploits the traditional ballad stanza in order to achieve a sophisticated technical virtuosity, with the rhetorical devices of alliteration, internal rhyme and repetition,69 as in such quatrains from Part II dealing with the becalming of the Mariner’s ship:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
(lines 115-122).70
The very first title, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, tried also to convey that the poem was a relic of the past rather than an original work.71 “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere was professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets,” Coleridge declared in the Advertisement to the published poem.72 Such perception of the poem, as if it belonged to a mysterious elder time, may be an effect of that ability of the writer to infuse “human interest and a semblance of truth”73 into a fantastic tale; in other words, what Coleridge defined as “willing suspension of disbelief.”74
Although in the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1798) most poems were written by Wordsworth, the Ancient Mariner was by far the greatest contribution to the collection,75 which was initially conceived as a joint volume76 and published anonymously.77 Such a secret of authorship was kept till the Preface to the second edition (1800) revealed the authors’ names and the fact of dual composition.78 Anonymity is at first a common feature between Lyrical Ballads and Coleridge’s poem, and characterises both the whole ballad and the two characters of the Ancient Mariner and the Wedding-guest. As the creation of the poem recalls the popular conception of “the mysterious figure of the Bard”79 associated to “that of a prophetic ancient poet,”80 and the Ancient Mariner appears to originate in an unknown past,81 so the main characters are not given precise identification. Although the Mariner is asked “What manner man art thou?” (line 610), he cannot name himself, maybe because, as Wordsworth wrote, he is a man without “distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being.”82 The Mariner, who has no identity, cannot recognise his fears and desires: his own psyche is formed during his tale and he manages to discover what sort of man he is only through his narration.83 He is affected from a kind of linguistic aphasia,84 as he seems to say nothing during the length of his voyage, apart from “A sail, a sail!” (line 161) and the only action he makes is the killing of the bird of good omen: “I shot the ALBATROSS” (line 82).85 Such terrible deed enables him to identify himself as an “I.”86 Nevertheless, the Mariner is and keeps being a passive character; even when he blesses the “water-snakes” (line 273)87 he is “unaware” (line 285)88 of what he is doing. His life comes to be decided by all the supernatural spirits that appear in the poem. The Mariner can see and hear them, from the ghost ship carrying Death and Life-in-Death (Part III),89 to the angels appearing on his shipmates’ corpses (Part V)90 and the two Voices discussing his fate (Part VI),91 but he can never talk to them.92 They deplete him of conscious intention and affect as he has become ruled by the terrible curse he has to suffer: “to tell this tale wherever he goes.”93 As a consequence, the Rime comes to speech through the medium of an alien voice, and the Mariner becomes a sort of strange prophet, kept alive only to communicate and teach God’s greatness to others, rather than the real source of his tale.94 As Arden Reed acknowledges, the Mariner is “more the effect of the Rime than its cause, the by-product of a text that wills its own repetition.”95 This “strange power of speech” (line 587),96 which is the power of repetition, surrounds all the Rime: the Mariner, victim of his own voice, of the voice of the past, cannot escape his destiny to reproduce his agony endlessly.97 At this point, Coleridge seems to identify himself with the protagonist of his poem: his woes, and his resulting drug addiction, never abandoned him throughout his life, as the Mariner’s cycle of guilt and punishment, every time it is about to release him, starts again helplessly,
Since them at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
(lines 582-585).98
Moreover, the poet always appeared to feel, as the Mariner,
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
(lines 232-235)99
or, in Part VII,
So lonely ¢twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
(lines 599-600)100
A lonely figure, longing for a state of retirement and peace, who, however, needed every time the help of others in order to relieve his pains and fulfil his aims101 – the Wordsworths’ contribution to his poetical achievements is but an example.
As far as the telling of the Mariner’s voyage is concerned, the absence of clear quotation marks to indicate the borders of speech, especially in the 1798 edition, as for example at the end of this quatrain,
He holds him with his skinny hand,
Quoth he, there was a ship¾
“Now get thee hence, thou grey-beard Loon!
“Or my Staff shall make thee skip.
(lines 13-16),102
blurs the characters’ own identities and voices: the reader may be then allowed to hear the two voices as one and the dialogue may be considered as a strange dramatic monologue.103 As a matter of fact, little importance is given to who is speaking and who is hearing, there is no distinction between speaker and audience, as the ballad is a product of itself.104 The two worlds of the Mariner and of the Wedding-guest, which represent two aspects of reality in contrast – the realm of action, of the supernatural, of the irrational and terrific against the rational, calm, and “merry” (line 8) setting of the wedding feast – are then meant to interpenetrate as the total effect of the poem.105
As the Mariner is obliged to continually repeat his tale, Coleridge himself felt the urge to revise the poem more than once: first in 1800, then in 1817 and again till his death in 1834.106 “Each revision,” asserts Homer Brown, “is an apparent attempt to define and control the wandering meaning of the poem,”107 which always claims to talk about itself and its relation to speech, without being able to name its subject.108
In the 1817 edition, the poet added to the ballad a motto in Latin, which is an excerpt from Archaeoligiae Philosophicae sive Doctrina Antiqua De Rerum Originibus,109 written by Thomas Burnet (1635?-1715)110 in 1692. The motto warns the reader that the poem deals with worlds too vast and mysterious to be fully conquered and explained by mere words.111
Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibles, quam visibiles in verum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognotiones et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca habitant? Horum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, numquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in anima, tanquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis te contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut cera ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.112
In such an epigraph Burnet deals with man’s need to “classify” and fully understand the world around him: this is something our intellect, our ingenium, has always aspired to since the time when Adam named animals.113 The Mariner’s shooting of the Albatross may be considered as a symbolic attempt to “classify” it,114 to demonstrate rationally that it is not a divine spirit but only a mortal being: the Mariner has to bring it to the real physical world. However, as the bird, like all natural things, is a creature of God, the Mariner must be punished for his crime by the spiritual world by means of the natural world.115 Only after all his tribulations, at the end of the ballad, the Mariner understands, as Iron Maiden specified in their song,116 “that we must love all things that God made,”117 which may be considered as the moral message of the ballad, as is uttered by the Mariner himself: “He prayeth best who loveth best” (line 614),118 though Coleridge never meant the poem to have a moral.119
Furthermore, in the 1817 edition, Coleridge wrote even marginal notes that glossed the text, explaining the meaning of the verses,120 as the poem had been criticised, in its first publications, for being too archaic and too difficult to read.121 The gloss may be read as a simplified way that allows the reader to experience deeply the mysteries through which the Mariner’s tale is built up.122 It completes what the brief “Argument” summarises at the beginning of the poem, since it clarifies what the Mariner either leaves obscure or misses during his tale,123 and may be interpreted as a humanization of the supernatural and a modernization of the archaic atmosphere of the ballad.124 Some lines of the gloss were even picked up by Iron Maiden in the lyrics of their song in 1984,125 when the English band, at the peak of their success, was extremely fascinated by Coleridge’s text.
Formed by the bassist Steve Harris (b. 1956)126 in east London at the end of 1975, Iron Maiden established themselves, with the recording of seven studio albums and seven world tours, as one of the greatest heavy metal bands in the 1980s.127 Today, the band consists of six members: Steve Harris, Dave Murray (b.1956),128 Adrian Smith (b.1957),129 Bruce Dickinson (b.1958),130 Nicko McBrain (b.1952)131 and Janick Gers (b.1957),[1] and their discography has reached a total of thirty-six well-known albums.[2] If Deep Purple[3] may be deemed as the greatest and most successful band in the 1970s, so Iron Maiden gained this role in the following decade.[4] They have been the pioneers of the so-called New Way of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), and their famous name was taken from seeing an iron maiden, an instrument of torture, in an old film adaptation, “The Man In The Iron Mask”,[5] from the novel by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870).[6] Moreover, the band’s logo, which adorns all their albums, is written in gothic characters, as if it came from the past,[7] and their mascot, Eddie,[8] is a skeleton figure, always described as a zombie-like figure as if it belonged to a horror novel.[9] This indicates how the members of the band have always been influenced by literary works and historical themes, and by scary and dark images (one of their most successful albums is even entitled Fear of the Dark).[10] As a matter of fact, what has always separated Iron Maiden from other heavy metal bands is the subjects of their songs. Indeed, their recordings in the 1980s,[11] which recall the gothic and haunting atmospheres of many of Black Sabbath’s and Kiss’s songs, with a touch of Punk,[12] in their lyrics deal with stories and characters belonging to darkness, evil powers and apocalypse. Some of their most famous and evocative titles from this point of view are “Phantom of the Opera,”[13] “Hallowed be thy name,”[14] “Flight of Icarus,”[15] or “Brave New World.”[16] For instance, their second release, Killers (1981),[17] which has been considered as the best musical achievement of the band,[18] includes songs such as “The Ides of March” (the day when Julius Caesar was killed, in 44 b.C.), “Murders in the Rue Morgue,”[19] based on Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous famous story, or “Purgatory”[20] which is about unknown places and “fantasies lived times before” where the mind is bound to wander.
Their most famous recording, The Number of the Beast (1982),[21] which gave them worldwide success and marked the beginning of Bruce Dickinson’s career as Iron Maiden vocalist,[22] is reckoned by many critics and fans as the heavy metal album par excellence.[23] The title track starts with a quotation that paraphrases some lines from The Book of Revelation (12:12 and 13:18)[24] about the existence of “the Beast”, the Antichrist:
Woe to you on Earth and Sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath,
Because he knows the time is short…
Let him who hath understanding, reckon of number of the beast
For it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty six
and, actually, the song deals with a kind of Satanic ritual and the presence of Satan himself on earth.[25] As a consequence, many Christian groups and associations have branded the band as Satanists, encouraging people to destroy copies of the release.[26] Steve Harris has since claimed that the song was inspired by a nightmare[27] he had after watching Damien: Omen II[28]: a fact that may recall Coleridge’s composition of Kubla Kahn (1797), written immediately after a “vision in a dream,” as the subtitle of the poem underlines.[29]
As far as the influence of literature and religion in their music is concerned, Bruce Dickinson once declared he has always been interested in magic, religion and mysteries,[30] therefore it is no wonder that in their fifth album, Powerslave,[31] a song entitled “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” inspired by one of the greatest compositions of English Romantic poetry, is included.[32] Powerslave is considered by many critics as one of the best heavy metal recordings in the 1980s[33] and, released on 3rd September 1984, concerns human history and its mysteries, in particular referring to the Egyptian world. The band produced the album after a tour in Egypt,[34] the songs are characterised by oriental-like music and the cover shows a sphinx with Eddie’s face and a pyramid,[35] drawn by Derek Riggs.[36]
As closing track of the album, the band chose “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which was entirely written by the bassist Steve Harris in a relatively short space of time.[37] It is a little different from previous Iron Maiden’s hits: although some of them have stretched for six or seven minutes (“Hallowed Be Thy Name,” in The Number of the Beast),[38] this one lasts for more than 13 minutes and it is the band’s longest song.[39] If Coleridge had been born two hundred years later, he would have been a Rock star, considering his turbulent and troublesome life, very similar to the one of most rockers: Paul Di’Anno (b.1958),[40] Iron Maiden’s first singer, was sacked after the album Killers because of alcohol and drug abuse.[41] Coleridge would have appreciated Iron Maiden’s rendition of his poem, whose 625 lines are jammed by Steve Harris who did not take the poem itself and set it to music, he took the poem and wrote his own song around it.[42]
Iron Maiden run through the whole story of the Mariner, his sinful killing of the albatross, the ghost ship, his penance and redemption: they perfectly summarise the plot of the ballad,[43] with the alternation of unrhymed quatrains and couplets. Most lines of the song restate in modern diction what Coleridge had written almost two hundred years earlier, or, as said before, are an adaption of the gloss of the 1817 edition of the poem.[44] In some of them, Iron Maiden may seem to give an interpretation of Coleridge’s text: for example they call the Mariner Life-in-Death’s “chosen one,” as to show the central role of this character, although he has been chosen only to suffer a terrible curse. At the end of the song, the English band includes what, as stated before, may be considered as the explicitation of the supposed moral message of Coleridge’s ballad: “that we must love all things that God made.” While the original complex tale of the Mariner is told in the first person, Iron Maiden wrote their lyrics almost with a third-person perspective,[45] with the exception of some couplets such as:
And the curse goes on and on at sea
And the thirst goes on and on for them and me.
The Mariner has killed the albatross and the curse he brings to all the members of his crew extends beyond the boundaries of the song. The higher note at the end of the couplet (“me”) implies the first-person desperation that will haunt the old sailor in his life, and the listener is being involved in such a terrifying state.[46]
Moreover, two entire stanzas of the Rime sung by Bruce Dickinson are quoted:
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.
(lines 115-122)[47]
These are some of the most celebrated and famous words of all English literature and are in the middle of a heavy metal tune!
The song may be divided into two sections, identified even by changes in rhythm and tempo:[48] the first one deals with the content of Part I, II, and III of Coleridge’s poem, while the second moves on from the agony suffered by the Mariner till the end of the ballad. In the slow middle section of the song, between the two parts of it, another couple of stanzas from the Rime are interpolated to the lyrics:
One after one by the star dogged moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
(lines 212-219)[49]
Such lines are slowly uttered by a dark voice, while a long and haunting interlude is being played, as a symbol of the beginning of the Mariner’s tragedy and its subsequent loneliness.[50]
The hammering rhythm of the song conveys the turbulent voyage of the Mariner’s ship, while the consistent beat subtly mimics the original rhyme scheme of the ballad.[51] The storm, the ice, the fire, the images of death, the fear and the mysterious air surrounding the plot are musically transmitted to the listener, who feels the same experience as the Mariner, as if he were on the deck of the ship and living in an unknown epoch. The changes in rhythm, the guitar solos, Harris’s bass are the expression of the vortex of images and meanings conveyed by the ballad, and recreate the atmosphere Coleridge had fancied while he was walking in the Quantocks in 1797; finally, Bruce Dickinson’s voice cries all the agony of such a terrible voyage.[52]
The song is a piece of epic, a masterpiece of music: most fans acknowledge it as their favourite Iron Maiden’s track, an adventure in the world of Rock, poetry and mysteries that leaves the listener totally amazed.[53] During the “Somewhere back in Time Tour” (2008-2009),[54] the members of the band declared the song as one of the best to play live,[55] especially in that tour. Coleridge would have been proud of such musical rendition of his poem, which nowadays, thanks to Iron Maiden’s work, has become well known and extremely famous all over the world.[56] The fact that, in Iron Maiden’s song, most lines of the Mariner’s tale are in the present tense, while in Coleridge’s poem the events are narrated in the past tense, may be considered as an actualisation of the story, which is still alive in the present and will live forever. In fact, as the last line of the song says, “the tale goes on and on and on…”
1 Luca Signorelli, Heavy Metal: I classici, Milano, Giunti, 2000, p. 64.
2 Ibidem.
3 Grazia Cerulli, Elisabetta Cori, Donatella Montini, The World Wide Reader, Volume 2, Milano, La Nuova Italia, 2001, p. 59.
4 Ibidem.
5 http://www.egs.edu/library/samuel-taylor-coleridge/biography/, accessed on 26th July 2012.
6 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4b.htm, accessed on 9th August 2012.
7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_Robespierre, accessed on 9th August 2012.
8 http://ia600501.us.archive.org/23/items/cu31924105501831/cu31924105501831.pdf, accessed on 9th August 2012.
9 Adam Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, London, Harper Perennial, 2007, p. 130.
10 Ibid., pp. 130-145.
11 G.Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 8.
12 Ibidem.
13 Ibid., pp. 86-114.
14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre#Reign_of_Terror, accessed on 26th July 2012.
15 G.Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 59.
16 Corrado Lutri (a cura di) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, Firenze, Sansoni, 1953, p. VII.
17 G.Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 59.
18 Ibidem.
19 Ibidem.
20 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. VIII.
21 Ibidem.
22 Ibid., p. IX.
23 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 146.
24 Ibid., pp. 164-175.
25 Ibid., p. 177.
26 Ibid., p. 178.
27 The Complete Poetical Works by William Wordsworth in Ten Volumes, Vol. III: The Prelude, New York, Cosimo Classics, 2008, p. 323.
28 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 185.
29 Ibid., p. 186.
30 Ibid., pp. 241-244.
31 Ibid., p. 186.
32 Ibid., p. 232.
33 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographia_Literaria, accessed on 28th July 2012 and http://books.google.it/books?id=MIYCAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed on 28th July 2012.
34 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 233.
35 Ibidem.
36 Ibidem.
37 http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/biographia.html, accessed on 30th July 2012.
38 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 233.
39 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4a.htm, accessed on 4th August 2012.
40 G.Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 61.
41 http://freespace.virgin.net/bob.ellerton/E5-2-MH.htm, accessed on 31st July 2012.
42 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 201.
43 Ibidem.
44 Ibidem.
45 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4d.htm, accessed on 10th August 2012.
46 Franco Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, Milano, Arnoldo Mondadori, 2005, p. 184.
47 Ibidem.
48 G.Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 61.
49 http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/biographia.html, accessed on 4th August 2012.
50 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4a.htm, accessed on 4th August 2012.
51 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4d.htm, accessed on 10th August 2012.
52http://books.google.it/books?id=SGDQAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed on 31st July 2012.
53 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 201.
54 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. 229.
55 Ibidem.
56 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4a.htm, accessed on 4th August 2012.
57 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. 225.
58 Ibid., p. 202.
59 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_(ballad), accessed on 5th August 2012.
60 http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/lewis_alonzo_the_brave.pdf, accessed on 10th August 2012.
61 http://www.english.uga.edu/~nhilton/232/stc/comp4a.htm, accessed on 5th August 2012.
62 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. 202.
63 Ibidem.
64 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction, accessed on 31st July 2012.
65 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge The Friendship, cit., p. 202.
66 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott, accessed on 31st July 2012.
67 http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/poetry/minstrelsy.html, accessed on 31st July 2012.
68 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. 222.
69 Ibidem.
70 F. Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, cit., p. 190.
71 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Friendship, cit., p. 202.
72 Ibid., p. 203.
73 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. George Watson, 1817; London, Dent, 1975, ch. XVI, p. 184.
74 Ibidem.
75 A. Sisman, Wordsworth and Coleridge The Friendship, cit., p. 246.
76 Ibid., p. 247.
77 http://www.onthisdeity.com/4th-october-1798-–-the-publication-of-lyrical-ballads/, accessed on 6th August 2012.
78 http://www.onthisdeity.com/4th-october-1798-–-the-publication-of-lyrical-ballads/, accessed on 6th August 2012.
79 Nick Groom, The Making of Percy’s‘Reliques’, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 999, p. 6.
80 Ibidem.
81 http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/journals/corvey/articles/cc09_n02.pdf, accessed on 6th August 2012.
82 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner#Wordsworth.27s_comments, accessed on 6th August 2012.
83 Susan Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 32-34.
84 Ibidem.
85 Ibidem.
86 Ibidem.
87 F. Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, cit., p. 200.
88 Ibidem.
89 Ibid., p. 194.
90 Ibid., p. 204.
91 Ibid., p. 208.
92 http://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/major-themes/, accessed on 11th August 2012.
93 http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iron+maiden/rime+of+the+ancient+mariner_20068045.html, accessed on 7th August 2012.
94 F. Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, cit., p. 218.
95 S. Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, cit., p. 33.
96 Ibid., p. 34.
97 Ibid., p. 35.
98 Ibid., p. 218.
99 F. Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, cit., p. 198.
100 Ibid., p. 218.
101 C. Lutri (a cura di), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poemetti e liriche, cit., p. X.
102 Susan Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, cit., p. 35.
103 Ibidem.
104 Ibidem.
105 Robert J. Barth, The symbolic imagination: Coleridge and the romantic tradition, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 112.
106 G. Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 61.
107 S. Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, cit., p. 39.
108 Ibid., p. 35.
109http://books.google.it/books?id=OtYsAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed on 7th August 2012.
110 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Burnet#Life, accessed on 7th August 2012.
111 R. J. Barth, The symbolic imagination: Coleridge and the romantic tradition, cit., pp. 106-107.
112 F. Buffoni (a cura di), Poeti romantici inglesi, cit., p. 182.
113http://books.google.it/books?id=OtYsAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed on 8th August 2012.
114 http://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/major-themes/, accessed on 11th August 2012.
115 http://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/major-themes/, accessed on 8th August 2012.
116 L. Signorelli, Heavy Metal: I classici, cit., p. 64.
117 http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iron+maiden/rime+of+the+ancient+mariner_20068045.html, accessed on 8th August 2012.
118 R. J. Barth, The symbolic imagination: Coleridge and the romantic tradition, cit., p. 108.
119 http://www.gradesaver.com/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner/study-guide/major-themes/, accessed on 11th August 2012.
120 S. Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, cit., p. 39.
121 G. Cerulli, E. Cori, D. Montini, The World Wide Reader vol. 2, cit., p. 61.
122 S. Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech, cit., p. 39.
123 Ibidem.
124 Ibidem.
125 http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iron+maiden/rime+of+the+ancient+mariner_20068045.html, accessed on 9th August 2012.
126 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Harris_(musician), accessed on 16th August 2012.
127 http://www.ironmaiden.com/the-band.html, accessed on 16th August 2012.
128 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Murray_(musician), accessed on 18th August 2012.
129 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Smith, accessed on 18th August 2012.
130 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Dickinson, accessed on 18th August 2012.
131 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicko_McBrain, accessed on 18th August 2012.
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Enrico Spadaro 