The treatment of political issues in P.B. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and “England in 1819” Barbora Millerová College

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry usually includes romantic themes typical for his writing period, such as imagination, love, or beauty. However, he is also famous for his poems concerning political issues, and many of his works include radicalism and especially criticism of tyranny. He has been described as a “political theorist and missionary”[1]and thinking of war as “an act of national madness and poverty the greatest of evils”[2]. His strong disagreement with the current political situation around him resulted in a series of poems regarding the politics and criticism of the power in England, including sonnets “Ozymandias” and “England in 1819”. In both of these sonnets, Shelley describes the state of England in a negative light. In this essay, a detailed analysis of these two sonnets is going to be provided. Furthermore, the treatment of political issues in both sonnets will be compared regarding to their content and purpose, as well as formal features.

In the first of the political sonnets, “Ozymandias”, the speaker shares his recollection about meeting a “traveller from an antique land”, who told him about remains of a broken statue he saw in his native country, which is now left ruined and deserted. From looking at the...