ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two poems: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion. It discusses the nature of allegory as a mode of writing and reading. The chapter examines the manner in which the canonical Romantic poets responded to the tradition of allegorical writing and reading. It explains the poems by Coleridge and Blake as allegory. Allegory is a mode of writing which has its origins in Greek literary forms and in the religious tradition of the Old and New Testament. In considering the role of allegory in Romantic writings it is best to begin with the criticisms that Romantic writers levelled against it. Coleridge's criticism of allegory is strikingly similar to remarks made by William Blake in his A Vision of the Last Judgement. Coleridge considers allegory to be too didactic.
