Percy Shelley's 'Ozymandias': Mr Bruff Analysis
Summary
TLDRThis video offers an in-depth analysis of Percy Shelley's 'Ozymandias,' exploring the poem's complex themes of power's transience and the enduring nature of art. It delves into Shelley's life, the historical context, and the poem's structure, which uniquely blends elements of Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets. The video also discusses the poem's language and potential religious critique, inviting viewers to consider multiple interpretations of this classic work.
Takeaways
- 📜 The poem 'Ozymandias' by Percy Shelley is a short but complex work that can be interpreted on multiple levels.
- 🎓 For exams before 2017, knowledge of the poet's life and context is essential, whereas for the 2016 AQA GCSE exam, it's not required.
- 💼 Percy Shelley was a Romantic poet known for his nonconformity, including expulsion from Oxford and an unorthodox personal life.
- 🌊 Shelley's personal beliefs were deeply political, with a focus on pacifism, vegetarianism, and criticism of war and political control.
- ✍️ 'Ozymandias' was written during King George III's reign, a period marked by military conflicts that Shelley opposed.
- 🏺 The poem draws a parallel between the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, known as Ozymandias, and King George III, critiquing the delusion of power.
- 📝 The sonnet form of 'Ozymandias' is a blend of Petrarchan and Shakespearean structures, reflecting the theme of power's transience.
- 🏛 The poem's language uses negative descriptors and alliteration to emphasize the fall of the once-powerful Ozymandias.
- 🗿 The statue's inscribed words, 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!', underscore the theme of the futility of power and grandeur.
- 🖋️ Shelley's use of the sonnet form, with its evolving rhyme scheme, mirrors the shifting nature of power and the enduring quality of art.
- 🔮 The poem invites multiple interpretations, including critiques of political leadership, religious authority, and the enduring nature of art.
Q & A
Who is the poet of 'Ozymandias' and what is his significance?
-The poet of 'Ozymandias' is Percy Shelley, a leading figure among the Romantic poets. He is significant not only for his innovative poetry but also for his controversial personal life and political beliefs, which often found expression in his work.
What are the key themes of 'Ozymandias'?
-The key themes of 'Ozymandias' include the delusion of power, the impermanence of might and majesty, and the enduring nature of art. Shelley uses the poem to critique the arrogance of leaders who believe their power is supreme and everlasting.
What is the historical context of 'Ozymandias'?
-The historical context of 'Ozymandias' is multi-layered. It references Ramesses II, an Egyptian pharaoh known for his military conquests, and it was written during the reign of King George III, a monarch involved in numerous military conflicts, which Shelley, a pacifist, disapproved of.
How does Shelley use the sonnet form in 'Ozymandias'?
-Shelley employs a unique blend of Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms in 'Ozymandias'. The poem begins with an octave presenting the details of the powerful Ozymandias, followed by a sestet that reflects on the transient nature of power. Shelley also introduces a new rhyme scheme, suggesting the evolution of power and form.
What is the significance of the title 'Ozymandias'?
-The title 'Ozymandias' is derived from the Greek words 'Ozium', meaning 'to breathe', and 'mandate', meaning 'to rule', reflecting the poem's theme of power and control. It also directly references Ramesses II, known as Ozymandias in Greek, emphasizing the historical and political context.
How does Shelley use language to convey the poem's themes?
-Shelley uses a variety of language techniques in 'Ozymandias' to convey its themes. These include the strategic use of negative words to criticize power, alliteration to emphasize harshness, and religious references to critique authority, all contributing to the poem's complex message.
What is the role of the artist in 'Ozymandias'?
-The artist in 'Ozymandias' is portrayed as someone whose work outlives the power it represents. The sculptor's skill in capturing Ozymandias's arrogance is preserved even as the statue crumbles, suggesting that art is a lasting form of expression that can critique and outlast the powerful.
What is the irony present in 'Ozymandias'?
-The irony in 'Ozymandias' lies in the contrast between Ozymandias's expectation of eternal grandeur and the reality of his broken statue in the desert. This irony underscores the poem's theme that power and might are not enduring.
How might 'Ozymandias' be interpreted as a critique of religion?
-The poem can be read as a critique of religious authority through its religious undertones and references. Ozymandias's self-designation as 'king of kings' mirrors biblical descriptions of Jesus, and the desert setting evokes the temptation of Jesus, suggesting a comparison between the transient power of earthly rulers and the more enduring nature of religious figures.
What is the significance of the desert setting in 'Ozymandias'?
-The desert setting in 'Ozymandias' serves as a backdrop that emphasizes the isolation and decay of Ozymandias's power. It also acts as a symbol of the natural world's enduring nature, contrasting with the ephemeral might of human rulers and possibly religious figures.
How does the poem's structure reflect its themes?
-The structure of 'Ozymandias', blending elements of Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms and introducing a new rhyme scheme, mirrors the poem's themes of change and impermanence. Just as the sonnet forms evolve, so too does power shift and decay, reinforcing the message that nothing, not even artistic form, remains unchanged.
Outlines
📜 Introduction to 'Ozymandias' and Shelley's Life
The video begins with a welcome and an introduction to the poem 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The presenter emphasizes the complexity of the poem despite its brevity and promotes a guide to poetry for further reading. The discussion then shifts to the relevance of Shelley's life to the poem, noting the differences in exam requirements regarding biographical context. Shelley is painted as a fascinating figure: a wealthy, educated Romantic poet expelled from Oxford for his atheistic views, who married young and was ultimately drowned at sea. His lack of success during his lifetime is contrasted with his posthumous acclaim. The presenter also touches on Shelley's political beliefs, which are reflected in his poetry, and sets the stage for a deeper analysis of 'Ozymandias' by discussing the historical and literary context, including the reign of King George III and the Romantic movement.
🔍 Deep Dive into the Historical and Literary Context
This paragraph delves deeper into the historical context of 'Ozymandias', focusing on the figure of Ramesses II, also known as Ozymandias, an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled around 1279 to 1213 BC. The presenter draws parallels between Ramesses II and King George III, noting their shared military ambitions and suggesting that the poem may critique the latter through the lens of the former. The discussion also covers the sonnet-writing competition between Shelley and Horace Smith, which led to the creation of the poem, and the influence of the British Museum's acquisition of a statue of Ramesses II. The presenter advises on the relevance of this context depending on the exam being taken, highlighting the usefulness of understanding the poem's background even when not explicitly required.
🏛 Analyzing the Sonnet Form and Its Significance
The video segment explores the structure of 'Ozymandias', identifying it as a sonnet that blends elements of both the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms. The presenter explains the traditional structure of a sonnet, with its problem-presenting octave and resolving sestet, and the importance of the volta. Shelley's poem is noted for its innovative rhyme scheme, which evolves from the traditional a-b-a-b pattern to a more complex structure, reflecting the theme of power's transience. The discussion suggests that the poem's form mirrors its content, with the evolution of the sonnet form echoing the shifting nature of power and the enduring quality of art.
🌐 Exploring Language and Irony in 'Ozymandias'
This paragraph scrutinizes the language and use of irony in 'Ozymandias'. The presenter discusses how Shelley's choice of words, such as the negative descriptors and the aggressive alliteration in 'cold command', serve to criticize the powerful. The religious undertones are also examined, with 'king of kings' drawing a parallel to Jesus and the desert setting reminiscent of the temptation of Jesus. The irony is highlighted through the contrast between Ozymandias's expected immortality and the reality of his crumbling statue, suggesting a broader theme of the impermanence of power and the enduring nature of art and nature.
📚 Conclusion and Invitation for Further Discussion
In the concluding paragraph, the presenter invites viewers to share their interpretations of the poem, whether it be a critique of specific figures like Jesus or King George III, or a broader commentary on power. The video ends with a call to action for viewers to support the presenter's work by purchasing the revision guide, which is linked in the video description, and to engage in the评论区 to enrich the collective understanding of 'Ozymandias'.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Ozymandias
💡Percy Shelley
💡Romanticism
💡Sonnet
💡Petrarchan Sonnet
💡Shakespearean Sonnet
💡Alliteration
💡Irony
💡Religious Critique
💡Power and Transience
Highlights
Introduction to the detailed analysis of Percy Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias'.
Availability of a comprehensive guide to poetry, including 'Ozymandias', for instant download.
Relevance of Percy Shelley's life to the poem, depending on the exam context.
Percy Shelley's background as a Romantic poet and his expulsion from Oxford for atheism.
Shelley's personal life, including his marriages and untimely death at sea.
The lack of success of Shelley's work during his lifetime compared to his posthumous fame.
Shelley's political beliefs as a pacifist and vegetarian, reflected in his poetry.
Contextualizing 'Ozymandias' during King George III's reign and his military conflicts.
Definition and characteristics of Romantic poetry, with Shelley as part of the second generation.
The influence of Ramesses II on the poem 'Ozymandias' and the historical context.
The sonnet-writing competition between Shelley and Horace Smith that led to 'Ozymandias'.
The literal meaning of the poem describing the ruins of Ozymandias' statue.
Themes of the poem, including the delusion of power and the lasting nature of art.
Explanation of the sonnet form and its variations in 'Ozymandias'.
The use of language and sound in the poem to convey meaning and emotion.
Irony in the poem, contrasting Ozymandias' expectation of eternal power with his crumbling statue.
Possible religious interpretations of the poem, including critiques of Jesus and King George III.
Encouragement for viewers to share their interpretations of the poem in the comments.
Promotion of the revision guide for further study and support of the video content.
Transcripts
Hello everybody and welcome to this detailed analysis of the poem ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy
Shelley.
Very short poem.
Seems like it should be easy, but it's an incredibly clever complex
poem.
Before I go any further, everything that I go through in this video is written down in
detail in my guide to poetry, which you can pick up through following the link on the
description of this video.
It's an e-book; downloads instantly to your computer, so why
scribble furiously when it's all there written out in longhand for you and contains lots
of other poems as well?
‘My Last Duchess’ is in there.
So do pick up a copy.
Let's have a look at the poem.
Well, the first thing is the poet Percy Shelley.
When we are
studying a poem, it's important that we only look at areas of a poet's life that are actually
relevant to the poem itself.
Now, depending on when you're taking the exam, you may or may not need to know about the
poet's life and context.
So if you're taking the 2016 AQA GCSE exam, then you don't need
to know about the poet's life or the context surrounding when the poem was written.
But
if you're taking the 2017 onward exams, or perhaps you’re in a different country taking
a different exam, you do need to know about the context.
So let me go through some interesting things.
Now, Percy Shelley is honestly one of the
most interesting poets that ever lived.
And, as I was saying, we should only really study
areas of the poet's life which are important to our understanding of their poetry.
But
with Percy Shelley, it's just too interesting not to look at everything.
He was born in 1792.
He was one of the Romantic poets.
I’ll explain a bit more on that later.
And he came from a very wealthy family.
In fact, he was set to inherit the riches of
his grandfather and his role of MP, so he had a kind of life mapped down for him that
should have been very comfortable.
He went to Eton and Oxford, but his life took a big twist and he was expelled from university
for writing in favor of atheism.
He wrote this paper that sort of argued against existence
of God.
And, then, he delivered them to all the bishops and people, and he was expelled.
At the age of 16, he ran away and got married.
But he, then, left his wife and ran off with
a girl called Mary, who would ultimately be Mary Shelley the writer of Frankenstein.
In
1816, his first wife committed suicide.
And just three weeks later, Percy married Mary
Shelley.
And Percy himself was drowned at sea while sailing to Italy at the age of just
29.
So, as I said, what a fascinating person.
And it's also interesting though to note that Percy Shelley was not very successful as a
writer during his own lifetime.
Although, today, we associate him with the much more
successful poets Byron and Keats, he was nowhere near as popular.
Byron actually sold as many
as 10,000 copies of his poems in just one day, whereas Shelley wrote almost just for
himself.
There was no major interest from the public.
Of course, today, that's different.
He's regarded as one of the finest poets ever.
But back
in his time, he really was not successful at all.
That’s sad, isn't it?
Wouldn't it
be nice to say to him, “Look, we’ve studied you for hundreds of years since”?
He was a deeply political person, and that shows through in a lot of his poetry.
He was
a pacifist.
He didn't believe in war.
He believed in protest, but nonviolent protest.
And he
was a vegetarian, and he wrote widely on that subject.
So let's look at the context.
Shelley wrote ‘Ozymandias’ during the reign of King
George the Third who you can see here on the screen.
There's a lot that can be said about this king who reigned for longer than any other
king before him.
But the key points for this poem are that King George the Third was involved
in a large number of military conflicts around the world.
And, of course, Shelley hated that
So, King George (the Third) is often thought of as the inspiration for this, and I'll go
into that, of course, in a bit.
Romanticism, a huge topic, the sort of thing that you study in detail if you do this English
literature at degree level.
But let me give you a few points.
So, Shelley belonged to what is known as the second generation of the Romantic poets.
Romantic
poetry can be defined as containing a number of conventions.
Number one, a dislike of,
essentially, urban life –city life – and embrace of the natural world and the countryside;
a love of the supernatural; and the use of everyday ordinary language, which wasn't ridiculously
flowery but just normal language.
Now, the most famous early Romantics were Wordsworth and Coleridge.
But by the time
that Shelley was writing, it was felt the early Romantics had essentially sold out and
lost their values.
For example, Wordsworth, by that point, was now working as a taxman.
So the second generation of Romantics needed to set themselves apart from the old guard
to make it clear that “We're a bit different”.
So, Byron Shelley and Keats looked to antiquity
and foreign lands for the setting of their poetry.
So, in order to distinguish themselves
from what had gone before, they set their poems in foreign lands in the past.
And, of
course, that's what we see in ‘Ozymandias’ which is set in a foreign land and refers
to an ancient historical period.
Those second-generation Romantic poets often wrote against religion and political control.
And we can see both of those in this poem.
They used rich language which was full of
metaphor and classical allusion.
There is a second context to this poem though, and that is about Ramesses.
So, Ramesses,
who's otherwise known as Ozymandias, was Ramesses II, an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1279
to 1213 BC.
He's believed, by many scholars, to be the pharaoh who was in charge of Egypt
during the biblical Exodus of Moses.
But the crucial thing about this guy is he was a ruler
who led many battles to protect Egypt, but also to extend the borders.
So he did a lot
of military attacks to take new land.
And in that way, he's very similar to King George
the Third.
So I think there's a deliberate use of this character from history as he resembles,
in many ways, King George the Third.
The actual scenario that led to the writing of this poem was that Shelley was having a
sonnet-writing competition with his friend Horace Smith.
They literally said, “Let's
both write sonnets about Ozymandias.”
And, eventually, both poems were actually published.
The real-life inspiration of the
poems is thought to be the fact that the British Museum had just recently announced it would
acquire a statue of Ramesses II that weighed nearly 8 tons and the fragment of the head
and torso dating back to the 13th century BC.
It actually took a couple of years to
arrive.
That's Royal Mail for you.
That's all the context.
And depending on what exam you're doing and when you're doing it,
you may or may not need to write about context.
But even if you're not writing about context,
so if you're taking the 2016 AQA GCSE English literature looking at this poem in the Character
& Voice Cluster, it's still useful to learn the context, I think, to help you understand
the poem.
And, then, you've just got to detach and not write about it in the exam.
Now we understand that, let's have a look at the literal meaning of the poem.
Just basically
what's going on.
So it begins:
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of
stone Stand in the desert.
What does that mean?
Well, somebody's talking, and they're saying that they met a traveller
from a historic land who told me there were two huge stone legs standing in the desert.
Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose
frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
Getting a little bit more complex now with the language.
So often, with these short poems,
you look at them and think, “Oh, easy.”
But the fact is they're often complex because
they pack so much into a short amount of lines.
But what this bit really means is that: Near their legs, on the sand, sunk into the ground
a bit is the head of the statue; and its face is shattered and cracked; and it's got a nasty
look on its face.
It looks powerful.
The artist made it look very lifelike.
And on the pedestal these words appear – “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
So, a little bit more detail now: At the foot of the statue is an engraving which reads
‘My name is Ozymandias, king above all kings; and look at all I have achieved and feel hopeless.’
But, then, nothing else remains around the broken statue.
There's nothing.
It’s isolated
in the middle of the lonely desert.
So that's the literal meaning.
Themes of ‘Ozymandias’ Let's have a look at the themes then.
The
major theme of Ozymandias is that those with power are deluded in their belief that their
power is supreme and invincible.
This idea that the powerful in the world think they
are all-powerful, that their power will never go away.
And Shelley is basically saying, through this poem, that the might and power of leaders
does not last.
But, interestingly, art, as represented through the statue of the sculptor,
does last.
And it's also possible to read the poem as a critique of Christianity and
religious belief in general.
So, obviously, the two key things that the second generation of Romantic poets did in
attacking politics and religion can be seen in this poem.
Okay.
Well, when you understand the themes of a poem, it's time to look at:
- Where are those themes presented?
- How are they presented?
The first thing to say is that Ozymandias is a sonnet.
Now, the sonnet is a genre of
love poetry which originated in Italy in the 13th century.
The 14th century poet Petrarch
is the most recognized Italian sonneteer, but he’s not the person who created it.
That would be Giacomo da Lentini.
He created this very strict and tight form of love poetry.
A love poem from a man to a woman, it contains fourteen lines.
The first eight (octave) pose
a problem that the last six (sestet) solve.
And, line nine – we call it the Volta – is
a sharp turn which brings about the move to the resolution.
And it has the abba abba rhyme
scheme.
This form of poetry was made most famous by this guy in Italy, Petrarch, about 100 years
later.
Petrarch was essentially a priest who fell in love with this woman Laura.
And it
was unrequited love, and he wrote her 366 sonnets of unrequited love.
She rejected his proposals.
But, this incredibly difficult form of love poetry, he wrote loads
of poems in that form.
If you've got the time, try and write a sonnet following all of those
rules.
It's really, really tricky.
Shakespearean Sonnet A little bit later, made famous by Shakespeare,
we have the Shakespearean sonnet.
This is a different, almost like the new form of sonnet
– 14 lines; three quatrains and a couplet; the volta comes in the couplet at the end.
It's in iambic pentameter with ten syllables per line, and the rhyme scheme’s a-b-a-b,
c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.
This is important.
It might seem like it's all going up your head.
Why does this matter?
But it is important because, interestingly, the sonnet form is always about love.
So,
on one level, you could say, “Well, why did Percy Shelley choose to write this in
the sonnet form?”
And in a very basic way, we could say, “Well, if sonnets are about
love, it could just reflect how Ozymandias and, perhaps, the arrogant rulers – he represents
King George the Third – and, in the religious interpretation, perhaps Jesus or all religious
leaders are in love with themselves.”
But there is a much more complex and sophisticated and, I think, brilliant interpretation of
the sonnet form because Ozymandias is actually a mixture of the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean
sonnet forms.
As a Petrarchan sonnet, it does follow the format of having an octave, which
presents details about the powerful Ozymandias as represented through his broken statue,
and, then, a sestet, which focuses on how the power has disappeared and nature outlives
the powerful ruler.
But, then, there are elements of the Shakespearean sonnet in the poem’s form.
If you think
about the rhyme scheme with the first four lines – land-stone-sand-frown – that's
the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b.
So, there's evidence of the Shakespearean sonnet.
But it doesn't
stop there.
The rhyme scheme then changes to a whole new idea for a sonnet’s rhyme scheme.
So it
goes a-b-a-b-a-c-d-c-e-d-e-f-e-f…
Again, you don't need to write all this down.
It's all in the e-book.
Pick it up in the
link in the description.
But, essentially, what's happening is, there are three types of sonnet form in this poem.
There's the Petrarchan sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet, and this new idea for a sonnet which
doesn't really have a name.
But this other rhyme scheme.
And that's incredibly clever
from the poet there because what's happening is, Shelley's using form to suggest the same
thing.
Just as Petrarch’s sonnet form gives way to Shakespeare's and, in this poem, Shakespeare's
form gives way to a new form, all power ultimately gives way to new power.
Nothing remains forever.
Not even the form of the sonnet.
So you can see that the poet is using form and structure to reflect the theme of the
poem about the fact that power is not eternal; it all changes and moves on just as the sonnet
form does in this poem.
Absolutely fantastic, amazing work.
Let's have a quick look at the language, then.
A few things to look at.
Let me zoom in a
bit more for you.
The title itself ‘Ozymandias’, yes, we know, it's reference to Ramesses II.
But let's break down the word.
‘Ozy’ comes from the Greek ‘Ozium’, meaning ‘to
breathe’.
‘Mandias’ comes from the Greek ‘mandate’, meaning ‘to rule’.
So,
there's this sense that this kind of power and control is even reflected in the root
words of the title.
Look at the first line:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Now, if Shelley is using this poem to criticise King George the Third and his belief in himself
as a ruler and a leader and the fact that he thinks he's amazing, or even if he's using
it to criticise religion, he has to distance himself in the poem because you can't be seen
to be criticising something too openly in the context that you live in.
I can't just sit here and start criticising the exam board.
I'd have to do it in a thinly
veiled attack, which is exactly what Shelley does here.
By starting with ‘I met a traveller’,
he's distancing himself.
He's saying, ‘Look, this isn't my story.
I'm not openly criticising
the British monarchy here.
I'm just telling you about somebody that I met.”
But it's a thinly veiled attack.
We understand what he's doing.
Look at, in green here, all
of the negative words – ‘sunk’, ‘shattered’, ‘frown’, ‘wrinkled’, ‘sneer’ – this
plethora of deeply negative language is used to make it very clear the poem is an attack
and not a praising up of the powerful.
And look at ‘cold command’.
This is very clever.
This alliterative repetition of the
hard kuh sounds reflects the harsh nature of Ozymandias.
This is something that a lot
of poets do.
If you want to have this idea of anger or aggression, lots of words beginning with ‘C’
help you achieve that.
Poetry is meant to be read aloud.
And the sound that it makes
– ‘cold command’ – that [k] sound is an aggressive sound.
When you form that
sound in your mouth, it's aggressive and harsh sounding, which is exactly what the poet was
trying to achieve here.
That's why a lot of swear words have the [k] sound in them, because
it sounds angry.
The sound itself is an angry sound.
‘King of kings’ is one of the religious references which I'll look at in a second.
But look at ‘boundless and bare’; a bit of alliteration at the end to emphasise that
the vast emptiness that's there.
And ‘the lone and level sands stretch far away’ is essentially saying that the desert
itself outlives the statue.
So, this guy thought he was all-powerful and amazing, but, actually,
nature has outlived him.
So there's a few of the language points that you might want to annotate from the poem.
But there are a couple more things that I just want to talk about.
There's some interesting
irony in this poem.
What do we mean by irony?
Well, where what's going on seems to deliberately
contrast what's expected.
And in this poem we see that, because Ozymandias expected to
remain forever but his statue is now crumbling away.
Now, it's possible to interpret one of the poem’s themes as a symbol of the greatness
of art.
Whilst the might and majesty of the King don't last, the artist’s skill in capturing
the arrogant sneer is still visible.
In fact, along with the statue, although it's crumbled,
the artist still lives on too.
The lines ‘the hand that mocked’, ‘the heart that fed’
are referring to the artist.
So it's possible to look at this statue and actually think
about the artist.
Those looking at it are able to see the artist within it.
And the word ‘mocked’ is an interesting word.
It's got a double meaning – two possible
meanings – which is always very clever with poetry, if you can find a word or phrase which
can be interpreted in numerous ways.
Alternative interpretation, this word here ‘mocked’
Alternative interpretation is one of the key things with poetry.
If you can say, “This
could mean this, but it could also mean this,” then that's the way to get to the highest
marks in your work.
So what do we mean by this word ‘mocked’?
Well, as I said, there are two possible meanings.
It can mean ‘to mock up’ as in to create and make.
But it could also mean that artist
was actually mocking Ozymandias, ridiculing him.
And, then, this sets the artist above
the pharaoh because Ozymandias clearly didn't spot this mockery in the statue.
He didn't
look at it and think, “Oh, he’s taking the mick out of me,” destroy it, kill the
artist.
He looked at it and, clearly, was happy with it and said, “Yep.
Go and stick
it there.”
So it seems that the artist is satirically attacking his subject.
And, perhaps, Shelley
is using the sculptor as a metaphor for himself or a symbol for himself.
Poetry outlives the
powerful.
We know that to be true, don't we?
Because, as I said, Shelley's more famous
today than he was two hundred years ago, whereas King George the Third is just one in a long
list of ancient kings.
If Shelley is using the poem to attack King George the Third and to say, “Look, you
think you're amazing.
You think you're powerful, but you'll crumble away and be forgotten.
But I and other artists won't,” then, he needs to remove himself personally from the
poem so it's not too obvious that that's what he's trying to achieve.
And he does that through removing himself in the poem at the end.
They're very clean
at the end to remind you that: I am detached from the king and the sculptor.
This is just
something in the middle of a desert.
I'm not writing about present-day England, I promise.
It's just a random desert.
Then, there's this interpretation of looking at the poem as a critique of religion.
We
know Shelley doesn't like religion.
There are certainly some religious references in
the poem.
To begin with, Ozymandias himself – this biblical character that most scholars
believe is the same pharaoh who persecuted Moses in Egypt, in the Bible, in the book
of Exodus – immediately gives the poem a religious undertone.
But it’s Ozymandias’
description of himself which is most religious, this ‘I am Ozymandias, king of kings’.
King of kings, as you may know, is the title that is given to Jesus in many books of the
Bible – Revelation 1, Timothy 6:15.
Jesus is called King of kings, Lord of lords.
So
there's a reference.
I think he's saying that he thinks of himself as almost godlike.
And,
of course, the desert setting reminds readers of the temptation of Jesus which took place
in the desert.
So how can we read the possible religious interpretation of the poem?
I think, simply,
that it's the same theme, in that nothing lasts forever.
Leaders and those with power
soon fade away.
Although, perhaps, Jesus has done a little bit better in not fading away
than King George the Third.
Whatever you think of this poem, it's useful to have numerous interpretations.
Put a comment
in the comment section.
How do you see this poem working?
Is it a specific critique of
Jesus or King George the Third?
Or is it a more general critique of those with power
and how they think?
They're so amazing.
Let me know what you think.
I'd be really interested to find out.
And please do pick
up a copy of the revision guide, which you can see linked in the description box.
It
really helps me to continue doing these videos if you guys can support it.
As you can probably
tell, to prepare this poem has taken me about ten or twelve hours, so really useful if you
guys can pick up the guide.
Thank you.
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