Thank you, Hilary.

Any idea how you might have reacted--if you hadn't been told about the glosses--on seeing glosses in a pastiche/parody?

(I should maybe have found a way of introducing this thread without explaining about the glosses. Obviously, I've made it harder for readers to imagine they don't know about them.)

Max, I guess it would depend on how it's done. If I knew it was a parody/pastiche based on a particular poem, I would try to read or re-read the original poem. I actually did re-read "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" recently, but I read it on the Poetry Foundation website, which does not include the glosses. I had to specifically look up glosses to find an online version that has them.

A note of some sort might be helpful, but I suppose it depends on how important it is for people to know the source material in order to "get" the parody.

If I encountered a poem with glosses and didn't know the background, it would make me think of Nabokov's Pale Fire, but somehow I doubt that would be a common reaction.

Anyway the project sounds like great fun and I hope you'll share it if/when it's finished.

Reinvent the poem from the glosses?

Clive

Max, I've read 'The Ancient Mariner' many times, at school, at university, and for the purpose of writing competition entries, and I've never seen a version with the 'glosses' you describe. I think I would be confused by a parody that included them.

Thanks for the further thoughts, Hilary.

That's a fun idea, Clive.

Brian, that's exactly the answer I've worried about. Thanks for sharing it.

This thread has been helpful. I've been tinkering with the pastiche. I'll see what I can do with it.

Just one more bit of data: This boomer first read the poem in high school, and it had the notes, and I experienced them as part of the author's intention and would expect them to be there.

Thanks, Maryann!

Entirely apart from my little pastiche, I've grown curious about how common each set of conflicting gloss-expectations are, so if others feel like chiming in, I'll read with interest. Thanks in advance.

Late to the party, as usual ~ !

Clive, your list of Coleridge's best mirrors my own. Those poems are inexhaustible, and for different reasons, which speaks to their range.

I had to do an oral report on Coleridge's versions of "Dejection: an Ode" in grad school. It was fascinating to comb through the various cuts and changes that moved it from a highly personal effusion to its final (much shorter) version.

Clive's list:

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797)
Christabel (1797 – 1800)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
Frost at Midnight (1798)
Kubla Khan (1798)
Dejection: an Ode (1802)