2. Percy Bysshe Shelly
• 1792-1822
• Born to an aristocratic
family and raised on a
country estate
• Studied at Oxford
University but was
expelled when he
published, “The
Necessity of Atheism”
3. Percy Bysshe Shelly
• The expulsion estranged Shelly from his father
and he moved to London
• There he met Harriet Westbrook and they
eloped
• He began exploring his ideas of social justice
in his poem “Queen Mab” and he continued
to write and develop as a poet
• His marriage with Harriet was in trouble
4. Percy Bysshe Shelly
• Shelly then met and fell in love with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin the daughter of William
Godwin and feminist writer/activist Mary
Wollstonecraft
• Mary was also a writer (she later wrote
Frankenstein) and her politics were in line with
Shelly’s
• Shelly separated from his wife
• After Harriet’s death in 1816, Shelly married
Mary
5. Percy Bysshe Shelly
• Due to his radical politics and his separation
from his wife Shelly became an outcast in
England and he moved to Italy
• There he wrote many of his finest works: “Ode
to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark”
• He died in a boating accident at 29
6. Ozymandias
• Sonnet – 14 line, rhyming poem
• Ozymandias – Greek for Ramses II – powerful
pharaoh referred to in the biblical story of
Moses
• Octave – 8 lines – describes the tale of the
“traveler” who describes two legs of stone
without a body, next to the legs is the head or
“visage” of the statue sunk in the sand
7. Ozymandias
• The “trunkless legs” the “shattered visage” tell
of the destruction of the statue
• The sculptor knew his subject’s passions well
“wrinkled lip and cold command” – they are
still “stamped on these lifeless things”
• These survived “the hand that mocked them”
– the sculptor and “the heart that fed” -
Ramses
8. Ozymandias
• The Sestet – six lines
• We hear of the message on the pedestal of the
statue – “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings/
Look on my works, Ye Mighty and despair!”
• The pharaoh wanted other kings to fear and
admire him
• This is ironic since his statue has crumbled a
“colossal wreck” and all that is left is endless
sand
9. Ozymandias
• Shelly uses alliteration to call attention to this –
“stone/Stand”, “cold command”, “survive
stamped”, “boundless and bare”, “lone and
level”
• Shelly give us three points of view – the traveler,
Ozymandias and the author (Shelly)
• We know Shelly’s POV was about revolution and
social justice – his view of the monarchy was
negative – he might have been sending a
message to cold, power hungry rulers like
Ramses
10. Ozymandias
• Shelly uses alliteration to call attention to this –
“stone/Stand”, “cold command”, “survive
stamped”, “boundless and bare”, “lone and
level”
• Shelly give us three points of view – the traveler,
Ozymandias and the author (Shelly)
• We know Shelly’s POV was about revolution and
social justice – his view of the monarchy was
negative – he might have been sending a
message to cold, power hungry rulers like
Ramses
