Poetry - Ozymandias Flashcards
Who wrote Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias context
Pharaoh Ramses II, Shelley had read about him being a ruthless military man
Shelley lived in a period when the British Government, fearful of revolution, took oppressive measures against radicalisation Shelley’s hatred of tyranny
The sublime: For Romantic poets, nature at its most powerful and overwhelming inspired sublime feelings of awe and fearfulness of man’s insignificance in the face of nature. Thus Shelley closes his sonnet with the ‘colossal wreck of Ozymandias lost among the Tone and level sands which are boundless and bare, he uses the sublime to emphasise the transience of human power compared to the power of the natural world.
Shelley believed poets were the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world, and his poem
reiterates his belief that the arts prevail when all else becomes a distant memory.
About the romantics:
Believed in nature being all powerful
Imagination
Equality
Respect for nature
Ozymandias structure
Iambic pentameter but often disrupted
Petrarchan sonnet (14)
Doesn’t follow regular rhyme scheme
Structure changes when the king is replaced by nature
Comparisons for Ozymandias
Hawk roosting
‘king of kings’
When the king is saying that he is ‘king of kings’ it becomes obvious that infact the real king of kings is nature itself.
Ozymandias thesis statement
Time does not faze nature but withers man.
Nature will always win, it is all powerful.
This poem shows that power will always fall, but nature will always win.
The eternity of nature will always provail.
‘Traveler from an antique land’
Creates a sense of mystery, history, beauty, experience, knowledge and untold stories.
‘shattered visage’
Nature is more powerful than the king and so shatters his face - his identity which implies that he as a ‘great leader’ is now a forgotten identity.
‘sneer of cold command’
He is unpopular, a tyrant leader.
Ruthlessly orders and doesn’t care about his people. Also very condescending.
‘look on my works, ye mighty and despair!’
Provoking other leaders to challenge him, boosting of his confidence and that he cannot be beaten and so they have to kneel down to him.
‘the lone and level sands stretch far away’
Alliteration and sibilance.
He is now equal in death and decay while nature lives on and is eternal.
