EXTEND – Ozymandias

Ozymandias is told through several narrative layers and voices. Match each layer (1-4) to the voice responsible for it (A-D).
1 Reports the story he has been told. ________
2 Describes the ruined statue in the desert. ________
3 Reveals Ozymandias's name and status. ________
4 Shapes and preserves the entire story. ________
A Percy Shelley
B The inscription
C The speaker of the poem
D The traveller

Read the poem, then choose the correct answer.

1 The traveller discovers ________.
2 The inscription reveals that ________.
3 The sculpture managed to capture ________.
4 The significance of the 'lone and level sands' is that they ________.
5 The overall tone of the poem is ________.

Read the passage, in which a literary critic explores the desire to archive in Ozymandias and decide if the statements are true or false. Then look at the prompts and write some extra reflections in your exercise book. You can use the final text as revision material for your test.
Ozymandias originates in an archival fever manifesting itself in a desire to possess the object in its originality and to defy the destructive effects of temporality. This becomes evident in the poem's various narrative levels: firstly, within the embedded narrative of the traveller who relates of Ozymandias's destroyed statue. The latter constitutes a piece of art that was supposed to timelessly preserve (that is, spatially archive) the Egyptian pharaoh's power, but also to capture the essence of his character. That is, the sculptor strived for archiving the object in its originality beyond its mere physical appearance insofar as he 'well those [Ozymandias's] passions read' (lines 5-6) … Secondly, the said archival fever can be seen in the framing narrative in which the traveller's tale is embedded, that is, its poetical archive … [T]here are striking metapoetical similarities between the sculptor and the poet. Just as the sculptor 'stamped on these lifeless things' (line 7) the 'passions' (line 6), the poet stamps the traveller's tale into the sonnet form.

Prompts:
1 Refer to STEP 4 and explain how the sculpture subverts Ozymandias's authority, and what this suggests about art.
2 Compare Ozymandias to Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 and explain how these poems are alike or differ in their perspective in the endurance of the art.
3 Refer to page 291 in your textbook and, in particular, the box 'Nature', to further explain how the imagery of nature (particularly the desert and sand) conveys ideas about time, power, and human ambition.

Read the text, which explains how irony is used in Ozymandias, and complete it with the words given.

Irony in Ozymandias is mainly created through a sharp contrast between the inscription and reality. The inscription presents Ozymandias as a ________ ruler who is confident that his power and achievements will ________ over time. However, this is undermined by the broken condition of the statue and the empty desert surrounding it.
Shelley intensifies this irony by using ________: Ozymandias does not speak directly, but his words survive only through an inscription made by a sculptor and reported through ________. As a result, Ozymandias's voice appears increasingly ________, while the physical evidence of his rule is reduced to ________. The ultimate irony is that it is the sculptor's art, which managed to preserve Ozymandias's arrogant expression and statement, and thus achieves a form of ________.