the dark tyranny of despair
The theme of dejection is a significant component of "dark" Romanticism.
The most influential exploration of it in the canon of British Romanticism
is that found in "Dejection: An
Ode" by Coleridge, whose "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" has
already figured in the structure of the novel (Letter 2.5). Of the major Romantic poets
(besides Percy Bysshe Shelley),
Coleridge seems to have had the greatest
impact on Mary Shelley's writing
in Frankenstein.
