The "I met a traveller who " framing of the poem is an instance of the " once upon a time" storytelling device. The rhyme scheme reflects the interlocking stories of poem's four narrative voices, which are its "I", the "traveller" (an exemplar of the sort of travel literature author whose works Shelley would have encountered), the statue's "architect", and the statue's subject himself. However, despite Ozymandias' grandiose ambitions, Shelley reveals the ephemeral nature of power. Two themes of the "Ozymandias" poems are the inevitable decline of rulers and their pretensions to greatness. Shelley's "Ozymandias" is a sonnet, written in loose iambic pentameter, but with an atypical rhyme scheme, which violates the rule that there should be no connection in rhyme between the octave and the sestet. Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition Analysis and interpretation Hunt admired Shelley's poetry and many of his other works, such as The Revolt of Islam, were published in The Examiner. The poem was printed in The Examiner, a weekly paper published by Leigh's brother John Hunt in London. Shelley wrote the poem around Christmas in 1817 -either in December that year or early January 1818. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work." In Shelley's poem, Diodorus becomes "a traveller from an antique land." Shelley and Smith both chose a passage from the writings of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in Bibliotheca historica, which described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted its inscription: "King of Kings Ozymandias am I. At this time, members of their literary circle would sometimes challenge each other to write competing sonnets on a common subject: Shelley, John Keats and Leigh Hunt wrote competing sonnets about the Nile around the same time. The banker and political writer Horace Smith spent the Christmas season of 1817–1818 with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley. Writing, publication and text Publication history Typically, Shelley published his literary works either anonymously or pseudonymously, under the name "Glirastes", a Graeco-Latin name created by combining the Latin glīs (" dormouse") with the Greek suffix ἐραστής ( erastēs, "lover") the Glirastes name referred to his wife, Mary Shelley, whom he nicknamed "dormouse". Shelley had explored similar themes in his 1813 work Queen Mab. The book Les Ruines, ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (1791) by Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney (1757–1820), first published in an English translation as The Ruins, or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (London: Joseph Johnson, 1792) by James Marshall, was an influence on Shelley. Shelley published his poems before the statue fragment of Ozymandias arrived in Britain, and the view of modern scholarship is that Shelley never saw the statue, although he might have learned about it from news reports, as it was well known even in its previous location near Luxor. Although the British Museum expected delivery of the antiquity in 1818, the Younger Memnon did not arrive in London until 1821. The reputation of the statue fragment preceded its arrival to Western Europe after his Egyptian expedition in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte had failed to acquire the Younger Memnon for France. Earlier, in 1816, the Italian archeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni had removed the 7.25-short-ton (6.58 t 6,580 kg) statue fragment from the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II at Thebes, Egypt. In 1817, Shelley began writing the poem "Ozymandias", after the British Museum acquired the Younger Memnon, a head-and-torso fragment of a statue of Ramesses II, which dated from the 13th century BC. 1279–1213 BC), derived from a part of his throne name, Usermaatre. In antiquity, Ozymandias was a Greek name for the pharaoh Ramesses II (r. Origin The statue fragment of Ramesses II, the Younger Memnon, in the British Museum. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!", exemplifies the arrogance and hubris of a leader who believed his dominion would endure indefinitely. The poem explores the worldly fate of history and the ravages of time: even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion. Shelley wrote the poem in friendly competition with his friend and fellow poet Horace Smith (1779–1849), who also wrote a sonnet on the same topic with the same title. The poem was included the following year in Shelley's collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue with Other Poems, and in a posthumous compilation of his poems published in 1826. It was first published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The Examiner of London. " Ozymandias" ( / ˌ ɒ z i ˈ m æ n d i ə s/ o-zee- MAN-dee-əs) is a sonnet written by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).
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