Document Type
Teacher Resource
Publication Date
Spring 2015
Abstract
This activity, which incorporates students’ imaginative writing, uses Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1817 annotations to his Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a model for literary response and interpretation. Through guided discussion, students will first examine selected marginalia from Coleridge’s poem as an attempt to read the narrative through a particular interpretive lens. Afterwards, working in pairs or groups, students write their own glosses to the poem from the perspective and in the voice of assigned figures. By exploring Coleridge’s glosses and comparing their own, students will see how readers’ backgrounds shape reading and understanding of a literary text.
Recommended Citation
Hancock, Michael W., "The Annotated Mariner: Reading and Writing in the Margins" (2015). Understanding Poetry. 15.
https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/poetry/15