Dualism and Dichotomies: The Rime of "The Ancient Mariner".

The Metaphor equating the poet with an alienated traveller finds its basis both in unawareness of the effects travel may have on an individual's psychology and in the picture of the believer as an alien travelling homeward in the Bible and religious writings (cf. I Peter; 2,11). The poet like the believer is conscious of a fundamental divide between the physical world and a transcendent reality beyond it. Baudelaire's concept of the duality between ''Spleen'' and …

…the dramatic action in Faust II. Those who directly associate the use of symbols originating in religious traditions with confessions of faith should enquire why two Protestant poets should award Mary such great significance. In The Ancient Mariner the Queen of Heaven and Death-in-Life form an antithetic pair analogous to that formed by Circe and Penelope in The Odyssey or the Whore of Babylon and the Bride of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation.