General Literary Resources– Encyclopedias and Guides-- Jaidyn Eardley

I have found some literary resources to help me better understand a text before consulting literary criticism. The text is Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” I have researched encyclopedias and guides. These resources are concise and can help a reader become generally familiar with a text without delving too deep into detail.

1. Literary Reference Center. I found this on my university’s library databases. This online database contains many different sources of information. The specific one that I  looked at is a short article titled simply “Ozymandias.” It gives a broad but comprehensive explanation of various aspects of the poem, including a line-by-line breakdown, examples of form and devices, and commentary on its theme. For example, we read that “‘Ozymandias’ is at first glance a sonnet about the transitory nature of life and its pretensions of fame and fortune.” Statements like this give us things to think about while allowing for the possibility of our own interpretation. Though the article is fairly short, it was effective at familiarizing me with “Ozymandias.”
2. Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. If you thought that the previous source was brief, wait until you see this one! This encyclopedia provides only a few sentences, but they are sufficient to help us understand the basics of the poem. It offers details about the poem’s history, author, and subject, which could be expanded on with further research. Like the LRC, this entry gives a summary of the text’s general theme: “the poem offers an ironic commentary on the fleeting nature of power.” Some might argue that this source is not particularly useful, but for someone who is totally unfamiliar with the work of Percy Shelley, it’s an excellent starting point.

Encyclopedic sources are interesting because they can’t help but overlap with other source types– history, author's biography, etc. The above sources could be useful in a variety of ways. Most importantly, they help us understand the context of the poem, as well as helping to set the stage for formal and thematic analysis.



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