LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:3 March 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Coleridge’s Exploitation of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Md. Nasir Uddin, B.A. (Hons), M.A.

Abstract

This paper attempts an analysis of Coleridge’s famous concept of The Willing Suspension of Disbelief in the context of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. This concept used by Coleridge was intended to help his readers understand the attempt taken by him to bring them to fantasy land in Lyrical Ballads. It has established a significant way of creating the romantic spirit of wonder, teaching one how to treat the supernatural so as to make the readers get so very involved in the story that they respond to it with a realistic sense of suspense. The discussion here will be limited to how Coleridge in this particular poem has managed to capture the faith of his readers, only to proceed to turn this faith to a casual compromise between fantasy and realism.

Introduction

Norman Holland in his Dynamics of Literary Response suggests that we employ our “imaginative involvement” in a literary work in an “as if” process (Holland 63). According to him, there are basic artistic conventions that help the readers or audience to become involved with the imagination and the work. The entry into fantasy stimulated by the masterpiece or entertainment is not completely in the work itself; rather, the fantasies come from both the readers (or the audience) and the work, he says. The reader (or audience) is both reader (or audience) and author of fantasy in that “the literary text provides us with a fantasy which we interject experiencing it as though it were our own supplying our own associations to it” (Holland 311).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Md. Nasir Uddin, B.A. (Hons), M.A.
Lecturer
Department of English
Noakhali Science and Technology University
Sonapur
Noakhali
Bangladesh- 3814
nasir.nstu@gmail.com
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