+Literary Gladiators Thanks Josh! Much as I love literature and art and all manner of other things (and I do!) I find that a lot of the time the stories behind those things are just as fascinating.

+soulpatch59 Ooooo, that is a fantastic idea! Such a weird, cool story! I'll definitely have to put one together on that poem!

I'm not sure if "Ancient Mariner" has really permeated other cultures or languages the way it has in English, but it's a fascinating question. A quick glance through a couple books on Coleridge didn't come up with anything on translations, but that's hardly to say they don't exist. As to whether Coleridge had any idea of his legacy, I would say yes and no. He was certainly appreciated by the literary elite of the day, but didn't really appeal to mass markets the way others did. To say he was a cliché "unappreciated genius" may not be entirely accurate, but he probably did feel his work a bit unappreciated in his lifetime.

Hahahahaha! Yeah, this video makes me cringe a bit now. I had just started making videos and didn't have a camera with a flip-out screen, or the knowledge to properly frame the shot.

Ahahaha! They definitely do! There's three or four of these videos that have what I like to call "the midterm bump"

That’s why I’m here. 😂

🤘🎵🎸

It's hard to say, and it's an ongoing debate among scholars and critics. On the one hand, the poem is full of symbols and events indicative of Christian narratives (as well as other faiths and mythologies), and so (to quote from Martin Gardner) "The poem is thus an allegory in the higher sense in which certain Greek myths may be considered allegorical. Coleridge himself, in his criticism, stressed the difference between what he called an allegory -- a story in which every object and incident is symbolic of something else -- and a symbolic narrative in which only certain objects and incidents give to the story, in an overall way, a universal meaning". Coleridge didn't leave behind any writings suggesting how he meant the poem to be interpreted, but he must have been away of the various Christian symbols he weaved into the work. Whether he meant the poem to be a pure Christian allegory, or whether those symbols were used to give the poem, as Gardner says, "a universal meaning" is simply unknown. Ultimately, like a lot of great art, the interpretation is up to the person beholding it. I hope that helps! Thanks for watching!

BookwormHistory I truly enjoyed this. Thanks for making this video years ago!