Coleridge’s Surrogate: An Inquiry into the Identity of the Glossist of <i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i> (1817)

Abstract The writer of the marginal gloss of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817) has long been viewed by critics as an imaginary editor obsessed with dry rational analysis and pedantic moral teaching while being incapable of imagination and emotion, totally different from the poet. This essay first queries this notion and, by examining some key gloss passages, demonstrates that the glossist is at times capable of extraordinary empathy. The glossist’s ability to combine reason and emotion is a telling testament to Coleridge’s idea of how to be a qualified reader. Given the fact that Coleridge was a voracious reader of antiquarian books and habitual writer of marginalia, the paper posits that the glossist bears strong resemblance to the poet. The poem’s gloss passages can be regarded as Coleridge’s tacit practice of marginalia in a deliberate effort to illustrate this obscure and often misunderstood poem. The glossist’s resort to Neoplatonic machinery and Christian preaching is attributable to Coleridge’s philosophical and theological stance as a Christian Platonist. As expected in a traditional ballad, the purported minstrel, or rather, an only slightly fictionalized Coleridge, is emotionally reserved in narrating the ancient mariner’s tale, but an investigation into the verbal incoherence in the verse text, together with Coleridge’s life experiences, reveals the poet’s hidden affinity for the penitent protagonist. Coleridge writes the gloss in order to make the poem more intelligible, but also betrays a tormented soul not unlike that of the ancient mariner. As a side note, the author of this paper suggests a change of academic convention by using ‘marginalia’ instead of ‘gloss’ in reference to the poem’s gloss passages, hence dating Coleridge’s first record of publishing marginalia in 1817, not in 1819. 1