hello everybody and welcome to this detailed analysis of the poem oie mandas or oie mandas as some people say by Percy shell 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 now Percy shell is honestly one of the most interesting poets that ever lived and as I was saying we should only really study areas of a poet's life which are important to our understanding of their poetry but with pery shell 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 out for him that should have been um you know very comfortable he went to Eaton and Oxford but his life took a big twist and he was expelled from University for writing uh in favor of atheism he wrote this paper that sort of argued against the 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 shell the writer of Frankenstein in 1816 his first wife committed suicide and just 3 weeks later Percy married Mary Shelly 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 um it's also interesting though to note that Percy shell 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 shell 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 um but back in his time he really was uh not successful at all and it's sad really isn't it it would be nice to think you know wouldn't it be nice to say to him look we studied you for of years since he was a deeply political person and that shows through in a lot of his poetry uh he was a pacifist he didn't believe in war um 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 then Shel wrot oim mandas during the reign of King George III who you can see here on the screen and there's a lot that can be said about this king who reigned for longer than any other king before for him but the key points for this poem are that King George III was involved in a a large number of military conflicts around the world and of course Shel hated that oppressive monarchical government and he felt a Revolution was needed to overthrow so King George is often thought of King George III as the inspiration for this poem and um I'll go into that of course in a bit Romanticism a huge topics the sort of thing that you'll study in detail if you do this um English literature at degree level but let me give you a few points so shell 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 an Embrace of the natural world and the countryside a love of the Supernatural and a use of everyday ordinary language which wasn't sort of um uh sort of ridiculously flowery but just normal language now the most famous early Romantics were Wordsworth and cdge but by the time that shell 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 tax man so the second generation of Romantics needed to sort of set themselves apart from the old guard to make it clear that you know we're we're a bit different so Byron Shelly and Keat look 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 oie mandas 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 illus ion there is a second context to this poem though and that is about rameses so rameses who's otherwise known as oim andas um was rames 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 his uh to protect Egypt but also to extend the borders so he did a lot of military attacks to kind of take new land and in that way he's very similar to King George III so I think there's a a deliberate use of this character um from history as as he refers and resembles in many ways uh King George III the actual sort of scenario that led to the writing of this poem was that Shelly um was having a sonnet writing competition with his friend horis Smith they literally said let's both write sonnets about oie mandas and eventually both poems were actually published um the real life inspiration of the poems thought to be the fact that the British museum had just recently announced it would acquire a statue of rameses 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 um that's Royal Male for you but um yeah so that's all the sort of 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 and 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 you know just basically what's going on so it begins I met a traveler 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 traveler from a historic land who told me there were two huge Stone legs standing in the desert near them on the sand half sunk as shattered Vis lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it's 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 the most complex because they pack so much into a short amount of um lines but what this bit really means is that near the 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 on the pedestal these words appear my name is oim mandus King of Kings look on my Works she Mighty in despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and be the lone and level Sands stretch far away so little bit more detail now at the foot of the statue is an engraving which reads my name is oie man as 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 the literal meaning let's have a look at the themes then the major theme of oim mandas is that those with power are deluded in their belief that their power is supreme and Invincible this idea that uh the powerful in the world think think they are all powerful that their power will never go away and you know shell is basically saying through this poem that the might and power of leaders does not last but interestingly art as represented through the statue and 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 uh the the second generation of Romantic Poets did in attacking politics and religion can be seen in this poem okay well when you've understand the themes of a poem it's time to look at where are those themes presented how are they presented through the three areas that we study with any poem language structure and form the first thing to say is that oie mandas is a Sonet now the Sonet is a genre of love poetry which originated in Italy in the 13th century the 14th century poet petrarch is the most recognized Italian but he's not the person who created it that would be giomo Del lentini he created this very strict and tight form of love poetry a love poem from a man to a woman it contains 14 lines the first eight that we call the octave pose a problem that the last six which we call the sestet solve and line nine we call it the vter is a sharp turn which brings about the move to the resolution and it has the Abba Abba rhyme scheme this this form of poetry was made most famous by this guy you know about 100 years later Petra 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 um but you know 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 Sonet following all of those rules it's really really tricky little bit later uh made fav by Shakespeare we have The Shakespearean son it this is a different almost like the the the new form of Sonet 14 lines three quarin in a couet the volter comes in the couet at the end it's an iambic pentameter with 10 syllables per line and the rhyme schemes a a CD CD e f e f g g this is important it might seem like it's all going over your head what does this matter but it is important because interestingly the sonnet form oops wrong one the sonnet form is always about love so on one level you could say well why did Percy shell choose to write this in the sonnet form in and in a very basic way we could say well if if uh sonnets are about love it could just reflect how oim mandas and perhaps the arogant rulers he represents King George III 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 you know brilliant interpretation of the um the Sonet form because oim mandas is actually a mixture of the petren and The Shakespearean Sonet forms as a petran Sonet it does follow the format of having an octave which presents details about the powerful oand dasas as represented through his broken statue and then a second ST which focuses on how the power has disappeared and nature outlives the powerful ruler but then there are elements of The Shakespearean Sonet in the poem's form if you think about the rhyme scheme of the first four lines land Stone sand frown that's the rhyme scheme ABAB so there's evidence of The Shakespearean on it but it doesn't stop there the rhyme scheme then changes it changes to uh a whole new idea for 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 petran Sonet The Shakespearean Sonet and this new you know idea for a Sonet 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 Shell's using form to suggest the same thing just as Petra Sonic 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 Sonet 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 allw changes and moves on just as the Sonic form does in this poem absolutely fantastic amazing work 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 commands it's very clever this alliterative repetition of the hard C sounds reflects the harsh nature nature of oim mandas this is something that a lot of poets do if you you want to have um this idea of anger or kind of aggression lots of words beginning with C help you achieve that poetry is meant to be read aloud and and the sound that it makes cold command the C 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 C Sound in them because it sounds angry the sound 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 emphasize the 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 you know this guy thought he was all powerful and amazing but actually the you know Nature has outlived him so there's a few of the language points uh that you might want want to uh annotate from the poem whoops sorry to make you dizzy 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 oie mandas expected to remain forever but his statue is now crumbling away now it's possible to interpret one of the poet'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 mot 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 um which you know is always very clever with poetry if you can find uh you know 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 you know that's the the way to get to the highest marks in your work so what do we mean by this word mock well there as I say there are two possible meanings um it can mean to mock up as in to create and make but it could also mean the artist was actually mocking as oim mandas ridiculing him and then this sets the artist Above the Pharaoh because oie mandas clearly didn't spot this mockery in the Statue he didn't look at and think oh he's taking the mick out of me destroy it kill the artist you know 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 shell is using the sculptor as a metaphor for himself or symbol for himself poetry outlives the powerful and we know that to be true don't we because as I said Shel is more famous today than he was 200 years ago whereas King George III is just one in a long list of ancient Kings if shell is using the poem to attack King George III and to say look you're think you're amazing and 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 keen at the end to remind you that you know I am detached from the king and the sculptor this is just something in the middle of a desert you know it's it's not uh I'm not writing about present day England I promise you know it's just a a sort of random desert then then there's this interpretation of looking at the poem as a critique of religion we know Shel doesn't like religion there are certainly some religious references in the poem to begin with oie mandas 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 um immediately gives the poem a religious undertone but it's oas's description of himself which is most religious this I am oand as king of kings King of Kings as you may know is the title that is given to Jesus in uh 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 you know 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 you know that um 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 III 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 a specific critique of Jesus or King George III 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 uh linked in uh 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 10 or 12 hours so you know really useful if you guys can pick up the guide thank you