*Ozymandias* Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 1

Context Ozymandias:

Answer 1

Percy Bysshe Shelley
romantic poet
Shelley watched the arrival of Ramesses II into the british museum
Shelley was expelled from Oxford after a paper he wrote - disowned by his dad. sacrificing comfort for his beliefs - anti-establishment views - links to the weakness of the king in Ozymandias

Question 2

structure of ozymandias

Answer 2

sonnet: ozymandias love poem to himself
short form to relate to short nature of kingship
3-4 speakers - lack of trust

Question 3

‘antique

Answer 3

land’ - the land is a place of the past; abandoned

Question 4

‘two vast

Answer 4

and trunkless legs of stone’ - no body

Question 5

‘half sunken,

Answer 5

a shattered visage lies’ - hidden, destroyed by nature

Question 6

‘wrinkled lip,

Answer 6

and sneer of cold command’ - semantic field of cruelty - Ozymandias as a king

Question 7

‘those passions read

Answer 7

which yet survive’ - symbolic of the art/writing surviving long after the rest of his legacy. enjambment shows the continuation of the arts legacy

Question 8

‘hand that mocked them

Answer 8

and the heart that fed’ - Ozymandias as both a horrible leader but also good

Question 9

‘My name is Ozymandias

Answer 9

, King of Kings’ - arrogance as the hubris of Ozymandias. even as the greatest of kings, nature has ruled over him

Question 10

‘nothing

Answer 10

beside remains’ - lack of legacy

Question 11

‘colossal

Answer 11

wreck’ juxtaposition shows the difference between Ozymandias’s belief and reality

Question 12

‘boundless

Answer 12

and bare’

Question 13

‘lone and level

Answer 13

sands stretch far away’ - endless desert as a symbol of eternal power of nature