- Shelley’s Monument to Ozymandias by Anne Janowitz (1984): This article I managed to find through the Gail Literature Resource Center. Janowitz describes the context of the poem, how it was written in between the mid-eighteenth century and early nineteenth century when English citizens craved the exotica of Egyptian ruins and artifacts. It was constructed the way it was as a Romantic irony, in which the poem rocks back and forth in between its form of “sonnet” and something else entirely, forcing the reader to decide if it’s preserving the art or mocking it, or both.
- Postponement and Perspectives in Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ by William Freedman (1986): Also found through the Gail Literature Resource Center, this article dives into the issue that the meaning of the poem is difficult to achieve until the final interpretation. While the Pharaoh Ozymandias, or Ramses II, did exist and had a statue created in his likeness, the question as to who the Traveler is and what role they play in the poem was a concern for literary critics. One suggestion is that it makes the accuracy of the depiction less reliable than it would have been if told by the poet or the narrating character themselves. The reader asks more responsively: is the Traveler a valid source? The distance between characters makes the reader ask more questions and feel more deception. Then, the structure of the piece leaves the reader with distrust towards the poem itself as it complicates the hidden message a layer deeper than just the unreliable Traveler.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
General Literary Resources - Encyclopedias and Guides - Ariel H.
My task is to find an encyclopedia or guide that could potentially help us to study Ozymandias, a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The idea is that finding an article or guide relating to the topic of the poem, Ozymandias himself, then we may be able to understand the poem itself more in depth.
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I liked your comment on how the odd form of sonnet works to both mock and preserve the form. It works nicely with Shelley's history as one who opposes authority and further concretes the interpretation of the poem as a warning to the old ideas of monarchy and imperialism.
ReplyDeleteI found your questioning of the traveler to be a very helpful insight to the poem. If the traveler from the “antique land” is unreliable, what does that change about the poem? I think it makes it less of a story being told and more about a lesson being taught.
ReplyDeleteThe English obsession with all things Egyptian and the unreliability of the narrator are both really interesting facets of the poem's background and the text itself; do you think that the narrator's unreliability might reflect the myths and stories from the surrounding Ancient Egypt at the time, creating another myth in the process of telling the story?
ReplyDeleteYour comment about the Traveler made me start to wonder, what if this had been written by someone else? What if the traveler saw Ozymandias in this negative, tyrant-like light, but another storyteller would have seen Ozymandias as a true "king of kings" and as someone who truly would not be forgotten for his great works? It's all in the perspective, and while Shelley probably portrayed Ozymandias in this negative light due to his radical ideas, I wonder how another would have portrayed the "king of kings".
ReplyDeleteYour comment about mocking and preserving the sonnet reminded me of both Alyssa and Savannah's research - how it had fallen out of popularity and yet he continued to use it. He also doesn't explicitly follow the rules of a sonnet. Shelley was a revolutionary in many ways, even against average society.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting how Shelley goes between a sonnet and something else that we can't define- like something he's just making up. I wonder if he's saying something about individuality and self-invention?
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