Criticism: Ozymandias

EXPLORING Poetry, 2003

Shelley's works had a very limited sale during his lifetime, and for years after his death his name was
kept alive mainly by a few friends and admirers. Since the mid-nineteenth century, however, he has
secured a place among the major English Romantic poets—though his reputation as man and artist
has been attacked nearly as often as it has been praised. Just two years after the founding of the
Shelley Society in 1886, the literary critic Matthew Arnold inspired a reevaluation of Shelley's work with
his famous denouncement of the poet as a "beautiful but ineffectual angel, beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain". Charges against Shelley's lack of concreteness, control, and common sense
were common through the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, critics have reconsidered
Shelley's works in light of its subtleties of language, the intricacy of its cultural references, and its
social, political, and philosophical concerns.

One of the poems that has been revitalized by these new investigations is "Ozymandias". Probably
because the poem is easy to read and its message seems so straightforward, "Ozymandias" escaped
in-depth commentary through most of this century; much of the commentary concerning the poem was
devoted primarily to searches for its sources. Eugene Waith's recent article for the Keats-Shelley
Journal, for example, provides new information concerning Shelley's readings about Egypt and
Ramses II. Though such scholarship continues, other recent studies have provided fresh, original
perspectives on "Ozymandias." In his article, "Postponement and Perspectives in Shelley's
'Ozymandias'," William Freedman discusses how the poem's successive layerings of judgment and
perspective, and its use of postponement as a literary device, give it more complexity than may be
apparent on the surface. Consequently, the poem continues to reward readers of all levels, yielding
new meanings in response to new questions.

Source Citation
"Criticism: Ozymandias." EXPLORING Poetry, Gale, 2003. Student Resources in
Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ2114321417/SUIC?u=tall78416&xid=cd4
2a9bc. Accessed 13 Dec. 2016.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ2114321417