• 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 (I:L2:6). Of the major Romantic poets (besides
    Percy Bysshe Shelley), Coleridge seems to have had the greatest impact on Mary Shelley's
    writing in Frankenstein.