The fiends that plague thee thus: An examination of gender and the role it plays in Coleridge’s \u3ci\u3eRime of the Ancient Mariner\u3c/i\u3e

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was, and remains today, one of the most important literary figures in history, and his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner continues to be one of the most widely read pieces of literature in schools across the world. When it was first published, the poem was ahead of its time and was widely misinterpreted. For the past two hundred years, even, critical examinations of the poem have tended to reveal discrepancies rather than attempt to explain them. This work examines the poem through the lens of queer theory in an attempt to explain those apparent inconsistencies. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has central, if disregarded, radical gender formulations, that, when highlighted, will help explain more fully the poetic closure of the poem and Coleridge’s decisions regarding the revision of his famous rime