Ancient Mariner’s albatross too heavy for students to bear

ACADEMICS have given The Rime of the Ancient Mariner a trigger warning for its depiction of the death of an albatross.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1798 masterpiece has been deemed potentially upsetting for students at the University of Greenwich.

The poem, in which a sailor who shoots an albatross is forced to wear its carcass around his neck as punishment, requires a content warning for depicting “animal death”, according to the university’s English department.

Coleridge’s tale of a cursed voyage has also been marked for “supernatural possession” and “human death”, common themes in gothic literature.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, famous for the lines “water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”, centres on an old sailor telling a stunned wedding guest about a voyage during which he shot an albatross.

The offending stanza in the work, the content warning suggests, reads: “‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!/from the fiends, that plague thee thus!/why look’st thou so?’—with my cross-bow/i shot the ALBATROSS.”

The ship then becomes cursed. The crew, succumbing to dehydration, then “dropped down one by one”.

Later in the poem, the curse is lifted and “Beneath the lightning and the Moon/the dead men gave a groan”.

The possessed crew then begin sailing the ship to safety.

These supernatural elements may be upsetting to students, according to the content warnings, along with themes in many works of gothic literature, which is characterised by fear and haunting.

Other works taught in the literature of the gothic module have also been given warnings.

Prof Dennis Hayes, education expert

‘Stop treating your students, who are adults, as if they were infants in a nursery school’

at Derby University, criticised the decision to add warnings.

He said that cautioning students about Coleridge was “another tedious example of unnecessary coddling, particularly as most students would have read the poem at school”.

Prof Hayes added: “Stop treating your students, who are adults, as if they were infants in a nursery school.”

The University of Greenwich has been contacted for comment.