Hello everybody and welcome to this detailed analysis of the poem Ozymandias or Ozymandias as some people say 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. Now, Percy Shelley is honestly one of the most interesting poets that ever lived.
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 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 out 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 favour 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 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.
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. 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'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 non-violent protest.
And he was a vegetarian and he wrote widely on that subject. So let's look at the context then. Shelley wrote Ozymandias 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 him. But the key points for this poem are that King George III was involved in a large number of military conflicts around the world.
And of course Shelley 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 I'll go into that of course in a bit. Romanticism, a huge topic, the sort of thing that you'll 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, 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 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 sort of set themselves apart from the old guard to make it clear that, you know, 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 is 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 kind of take new land.
And in that way, he's very similar to King George III. So I think there's a deliberate use of this character from history as he refers and resembles in many ways King George III. The actual sort of 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 the sentence... Eventually, both poems were actually published. 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 Ramesses II that weighed nearly 8 tonnes 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. 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 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 the most complex because they pack so much into a short amount of 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 Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty in 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. 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 You know 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 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 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 through the three areas that we study with any poem, language, structure, and form? 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 de 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 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. you know about a hundred years later petrarch 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 sonnet following all of those rules it's really really tricky 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, 3 quatrains and a couplet. The volta comes in the couplet at the end.
It's an iambic pentameter with 10 syllables per line. And the rhyme scheme is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. 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 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 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 a 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 poems form if you think about the rhyme scheme of 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 it changes to a whole new Idea for sonnets 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 Patrak and sonnet the Shakespearean sonnet and this new You know 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 lang Which 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 a reference to Ramesses II. But let's break down the word. Ozy comes from the Greek ozyam, meaning to breathe. And 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 criticize King George III and his self-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 criticize religion, he has to distance himself from the poem. Because you can't be seen to be criticizing something too openly in the context that you live in.
You know, you can't, I can't just sit here and start, you know, criticizing the exam board. You know, I'm not criticizing the exam board. 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 kind of just telling you about somebody that I met. But it's a thinly veiled attack.
We understand what he's doing. Look 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 k 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 kind of 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. The 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 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 emphasize 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 to 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 Ozymandias 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 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... 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 way to get to the highest marks in your work So what do we mean by this word mocked? Well there as I say, there are two possible meanings It can mean to mock up as in to create and make But it could also mean the 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. 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 Shelley is using the sculptor as a metaphor for himself or a symbol for himself. Poetry outlives the powerful. And we know that to be true, don't we? Because as I said, Shelley's more famous today than he was 200 years ago.
Whereas King George III is just one. in a long list of ancient kings. If Shelley is using the poem to attack King George III 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 from 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 not... I'm not writing about present-day England, I promise. You know, it's just a sort of 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's 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 you know he thinks of himself as almost god-like 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 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 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 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 It's taken me about 10 or 12 hours. So you know really useful if you guys can pick up the guide thank you