Ozymandias

“Ozymandias” describes the ruins of an ancient statue Theme : all is vanity

Irony : the inconsistency of what is said with the reality (appearance vs. reality) 3 kinds of irony: dramatic, verbal, situational

Find examples in the poem of each.Setting Egypt and the Sahara desert Theme

the arrogance and transience of power

the permanence of real art and emotional truth the relationship between artist and subject Structure: Italian sonnet

rhyme:interlinks the octave with the sestet, by gradually replacing old rhymes with new ones in the form ABABACDCEDEFEF.

sound:metered in iambic pentameter the poem can be divided into two parts

Octave(the first 8 lines)—describes the fragments of a sculpture the traveler sees on an ancient ruin

Sestet(the next 6 lines)--goes further to record the words on the pedestal and then describe the surrounding emptiness. Technique--Irony

The use of irony in this poem

1.what Ozymadias said(\"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!\") and what is left behind him(Nothing beside remains.) \"the mighty\" should despair — not, as Ozymandias intended, because they can never hope to equal his achievements, but because they will share his fate of inevitable oblivion in the sands of time. Besides, there is no any “mighty” around his statue now.

2.The survival of the pharaoh not because of his own powers, but by the sculptor’s hand that made his sculpture.

3.The description of the desert—“boundless and bare” Although the sculpture is “vast and colossal,” after being put into such a large space as the Sahara desert, it would be seen as a small thing by compare.

The issue of Art

The attitude toward Art expressed in this poem:

The decay of the sculpture shows that Ozymandias obviously loses his power and is ignored. Artist and subject: Ozymandias’ passion survived by the sculptor’s hand. Octet

The speaker meets a traveler from an “antique land” who describes the ruins found in the desert wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read--the frown and \"sneer of cold command\" on the statue's face indicate that the sculptor understood well the passions of the statue's subject, a man who sneered with contempt for those weaker than himself, yet fed his people because of something in his heart(\"The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed\").

survive—a transitive verb—line 6-8 mean that those passions (arrogance and sneer) have survived

(outlived) both the sculptor (whose hand mocked those passions by stamping them so well on the statue) and the pharaoh (whose heart fed those passions in the first place). mocked—with double meaning:

＊to create/fashion an imitation of reality; to imitate

＊to ridicule (In Shelley's day, the latter meaning was predominant; but in the specific context of \"the hand that mock'd them\can read both \"the hand that crafted them\" and \"the hand that ridiculed them\".)

Sestet Message on the pedestal Irony

The message lives on, but the king is dead

The message is meant to intimidate, but are we intimidated by the dead king? Is Ozymandias still the king of kings?

How would we define the works of Ozymandias? Destroyed Decaying

Final Comments (12-14)

The sand seems to be infinite while the “colossal wreck” appears to be garbage sitting in the desert.