LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:10 October 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Shelley’s “Ozymandias:” A Case Study of Romantic Orientalism

Dr. S. Sridevi

Abstract

The paper aims at re-reading Shelley’s “Ozymandias” from a post-colonial perspective. The nineteenth century witnessed colonial expansion and the western countries began negotiating with the eastern countries from a culturally and politically superior position. Asia and Africa came to be perceived as inferior in popular imagination due to the academic endeavours in structural anthropology that had racial characteristics and archaeology that encouraged hegemonic thinking of the superiority of the occident. Poets and thinkers, caught in these socio-political thoughts expressed their opinions of the world from a colonial perspective. Thinkers like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and poets like Percy Byshe Shelley (1792-1822) invoked Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) who had written on Egypt. In the twentieth century Edward Said (1935-2003) analysed how academia was influential in re-creating a new world order in which the occident was portrayed as higher. This paper attempts to understand how Shelley picturised Egypt in his simple and famous poem “Ozymandias.”

Keywords: P. B. Shelley, Ozymandias, Romantic Orientalism

Percy Byshe Shelley (1792-1822) was an “English Romantic poet whose passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language.” scholars consider Shelley as a “passionate idealist and consummate artist who, while developing rational themes within traditional poetic forms, stretched language to its limits in articulating both personal desire and social altruism” (Reiman).

“Ozymandias” is a sonnet by Shelley, one of his most famous short works, and offers an ironic commentary on the fleeting nature of power. It comments on a ruined statue of Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramses II of Egypt, who reigned in the 13th century BCE). Shelley imagines the Egyptian location and a lonely statue on sands stretching far away with an inscription: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. S. Sridevi
Professor of English and Principal
Chevalier T. Thomas Elizabeth College for Women
Chennai 600011, Tamil Nadu, India
sridevisaral@gmail.com
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