Albatross (metaphor) Albatross (metaphor) The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798). In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered a sign of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps). Even when they are too thirsty to speak, the ship's crew let the mariner know
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark social views with the advocacy of individual subjective experience influenced writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wollstonecraft's "incarnational theory of the creative imagination" paved the way for Wordsworth's thorough treatment of the imagination and its relation to the self in Book V of "The Prelude" (1805; 1850). Her book also had a significant influence on Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1797–99) and Percy Shelley's "Alastor" (1815); their depictions of "quest[s] for a settled home" strongly resemble Wollstonecraft's. The most striking homage to Wollstonecraft's work, however, is in Coleridge's famous poem "Kubla Khan" (1797; 1816). Not only