First published in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” lives on today as what many consider to have been the single shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature (Greenblatt, 10-11). With six different versions of the text published in Coleridge’s lifetime alone, the poem continued to transform along with its author, editors, and audience. The most notable of these changes occurred in the second version of the text, published in 1817, in which the original archaic language was replaced with a more modern vernacular in a bid to appeal to a larger audience. Perhaps the most transformative change however, was the addition of the gloss, which Coleridge added “to counter criticism that the poem was obscure and lacked a clear narrative glue” which was “initially (…) critically received as a summary of the poem” (Wall, 180).
In our archive, “The Digital Rime,” we have chosen to focus our attention on the original 1798/1800 version of the text, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” but have also included the 1817 and 1834 editions so that readers can study the various editions and compare the revisions that Coleridge made in each version. A particularly substantive change we made in our archive was to make the gloss optional instead of an unalterable feature as it is in the modernized editions. While originally intended to act as clarification for the verse, many critics view the gloss as an over-inscription of the text, which changes and influences the individual interpretations of the readers (Wall, 180-81). The gloss and the text interact and meld together to create definite meaning, while at the same time, confusing the narrative, in what was originally purposefully indefinite (Davies, 262-64). In the words of Lindsey Davies, “while it might be considered ‘natural’ to focus on the poem itself, nevertheless this demands a deliberate suppression of the gloss,” which is easier said than done, especially with its authoritative tone (262). The gloss also forces critical interpretation onto its readers, thereby breaking the narrative flow of the poem (263). This doubling of the text created by the gloss is something we want to avoid in our digital version of the text, which is why the gloss will be an optional feature, rather than an imposing force.
For our archive, we chose not to heavily rely on authorial intention when deciding which edition to select as our primary text. “The Digital Rime” features more of an eclectic editorial process by including several texts and not deeming one as more important than another. As Jerome J. McGann points out, “no single ‘text’ of a particular text –can be imagined or hypothesized as the ‘correct’ one” (62). Our inclusion of the various editions does not privilege a single variation but allows for readers to either broaden their understanding of the poem by scrolling through changes made in subsequent editions of the original, or enables the reader to simply scroll through the original without the interruption of the gloss or the additional editions. By not forcing the gloss, we are providing a nonauthorial intervention that potentially exposes “the problematic character of the concept of final intentions” which tends to be prioritized in the twentieth-century editorial process (McGann, 61). By not prioritizing the gloss yet still incorporating it, we are still placing authority of the linguistic text with the author, while maintaining authority of the bibliographical text.
Coleridge’s philosophy of poetry was that the poet should evoke “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith” from the readers, and it is with that view which he “wrote the ‘Ancient Mariner’” (587). “The Digital Rime” has the gloss as an optional feature so that the reader is not pulled out of the suspension of disbelief by the narrowed interpretation that the gloss allows. Coleridge’s inclusion of the gloss was part of a cycle of revision to appease his audience; the altering or revision of a text based on its potential appeal to an audience was an important technique of the Romantics (Hume, 32). “The Digital Rime” has taken the complaints of the gloss made by readers and revised and altered it to appease a modern audience, thereby using the same technique that Coleridge applied to his poem. The inclusion of the various editions and the option to view the gloss also makes the poem more of an interactive experience for readers, and encourages them to think critically about the work while still providing the option of a recreational reading of the poem.
The design of our site draws upon visual elements from the Kelmscott Press edition of Coleridge’s poems, printed in 1896 by William Morris. In the same that Morris was striving for a return to the printing practices of the Early modern period in the age of mechanical reproduction and mass printing, our site aims to evoke the textual codes of craft-printed books in order to examine the ways in which bibliographic design can inform how we navigate and engage with texts in digital environments. The poem section of our site blends the design elements of the Kelmscott Press printed edition with a digital interface that allows users to view four versions of the poem at once as they scroll. By not privileging the original of the poem alone, our site views the 1798 Lyrical Ballads version not as a definitive or static text, but as a palimpsest upon which evolutions of the text throughout time are displayed through annotations. Careful attention has been paid typographical layout, the balancing of text with illustrative ornamentation, the use of white space and the placement of textual annotations. Our archive argues that, while it is important to highlight linguistic changes in various editions of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, it is equally important to draw attention to the material features of the various editions throughout the poem’s textual history, highlighting the ways in which Coleridge’s work has been printed, illustrated, read, and annotated.