Page 38 - Point 5 Literature Program Option 1 Teachers Guide (2) (1)

OZYMANDIAS
Percy Bysshe shelley

Student’s Coursebook, page 38

HOTS taught: Identifying parts and whole
Literary Terms taught: Rhyme scheme, Verse

Background Information

Biography
Percy Bysshe shelley (1792–1822) was one of the greatest poets of the Romantic period.
descended from wealthy English earls, he received a fine education in the Classics (Greek and
Latin) but preferred to live life as a free-thinker, the modern trend in his lifetime, just after the
French Revolution. Ozymandias is written in the Romantic style of ancient Greek lyric poems –
from shelley’s time this genre included sonnets. However, shelley was an unconventional man
and not unexpectedly, his sonnet includes many unconventional elements.

Cultural issues
This poem is a sonnet – a poem of 14 lines, usually divided into two parts – the octave (first 8
lines) and the sestet (last 6 lines). in many cases the octave sets the scene or presents a problem,
while the sestet offers the poet’s thoughts about it or a solution. Here the octave describes the
scene while the sestet provides insightful commentary on that scene.

General Interpretation
Ozymandias is one of shelley’s most famous poems, an extraordinarily modern piece of work.
in keeping with the personal perspective of its genre, the lyric poem, it is first of all a travelog,
about a far-off, mysterious land – emphasizing Romanticism’s love of distant and exotic places.
The poet creates even more distance for the reader by allowing the traveler to speak, rather than
using his own voice as narrator.
in fact, the poem has the unusual feature of multiple narrators, thus containing ‘crossover’
elements of drama and narrative, with the characters of the sculptor and his work of art brought
to life as the tale unfolds of a headless statue unexpectedly come upon in the bare and boundless
desert. (it is interesting to remember at this point that shelley’s wife was mary, authoress of the
highly imaginative novel, Frankenstein, about a corpse come to life.) on closer examination, an
inscription reveals the statue to be that of the mighty ozymandias, User-maat-Re in Egyptian
(Pharaoh Ramses ii), renowned in ancient times for his longevity and the proliferation of his
works (statues, monuments and other buildings of his empire).
The poem is recognizable as an italian sonnet (meaning ‘little song’) of 14 lines, divided into
an octave (eight-line stanza) and a sestet (six-line stanza). in the octave, the poet brings the
ruined statue to life for the reader in a series of images: from the shattered visage, half-buried
in the sand, to the face itself, with its frown / And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command. Then
readers ‘meet’ a new character in the drama, the sculptor; we can go back in time and imagine
him sculpting the living king, capturing the expressions on his face Which yet survive. Through

38 ozymandias