'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and Poetic Technique - Professor Belinda Jack

In the line, 'The Western wave was all aflame', the 'Western wave' refers to the sea. But is it this simple? What do forms of substitution, synecdoche (a figure of speech in which the name of a part is used to stand for the whole) for example, lend to this magnificent and shadowy poem?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...

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