THE ANCIENT MARINERのモラル解釈におけるINTERNATIONAL FALLACYの試み

抄録

The essay consists of four parts. After the preliminary remarks in the first part that the New Critics' belief in so-called Intentional Fallacy, if pushed to an extreme, tends to make them miss the root or the variety of the matter, and that their favourite method of Close Reading should also be applied to the documents of intention, the second part deals with the basis for the whole study. No official intention is revealed by the author himself about the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The only exception may be sought in his much-discussed remarks in the Table Talk (31st May 1830) where his intention about the moral of the Rime indirectly disclosed. From J.L. Lowes through R.P. Warren down to Mr. Brett, every scholar has paid considerable attention to this. To my way of thinking, three points, however, seem to have been overlooked: the possibility of a) detecting closer connection of the whole Tale of the Merchant & the Genie with the Rime; b) finding deliberate implications in Coleridge's italics; c) reading between the lines his personal feeling against Mrs. Barbauld. These ponits are discussed successively. a) H. N. Coleridge, the editor of the Table Talk, misled nearly all the critics by abridging the Tale as if it were complete in itself as he quotes it in the foot note. But the Tale, considered in its entirety, unlike the abridged one, bears several analogies with the Rime, whose light may serve to illuminate his intention. The fact that: i) according to the abridged one, the Tale is nothing but a tale of compensation, whereas the whole Tale is that of compensation followed by that of redemption and reconciliation; ii) three old men play important role in the whole Tale, while none of them appears in the abridged one; iii) they confess respectively tales of man's transformation into animal; bears the close parallel to the Rime. Because: i) its main stress is laid not on compensation but on redemption and reconciliation following compensation; ii) as these three old men convert Genie's idea of revenge by telling their strange experiences, so the old navigator in the Rime do the same with the Wedding Guest; iii) where the Tale revolves round the three confessions of animal transformation, the Rime enfolds its mechanism with the very implicit symbolism of animal transformation at its centre, presenting Albatross as 'consubstantial' with the human. b) Coleridge's own italics (must, because) in his reply to Mrs. Barbauld hides a clue to surmise his intention. The gist of the 'must-because' may be called the legislative reason or the eye-for-eye logic, by which both the Rime and the Tale are half motivated. Here, what Polar Spirit to Albatross is what Genie to his Son. But Coleridge, regarding the 'must, because' as a mertinet's error, finds himself justified in giving the positive meaning to the final triumph of the higher Sacramental Love and reconciliation, a moral more true to life than the mere code of compensation. c) A perusal of newly edited Complete Letters of Coleridge will show that Mrs. Barbauld to whom he paid high respect earlier, has later fallen in his estimation, and at the lowest of his estimation the reply to her stricture was made. Furthermore, the moral lesson habit in her juvenile books caused serious dissatisfaction to him. What the tone of Coleridge's jocular retort suggests is that though both the Rime and the Tale are superficially the same moral tale of revenge (and in this sense the Rime seems to fall short of completeness), they are really the tales not of 'must, because', but of reconciliation and love through the mystery of animal transformation. In her excessive moral awareness, Mrs. Barbauld failed to perceive this. In the third part a brief exposition is given of the Rime's abrupt symbolic change from obsessive passivity to spontaneous activity. From the

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