Analysing Percy Shelley's 'Ozymandias' and Sylvia Plath's 'The Colossus'
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A comparison of two monumental (heh) poems: The Colossus and Ozymandias, with some discussion on how authorial view is established, how conflicting ideas can be held in tension, and some discussion of structural features of the texts.
Of the two poems, I think I prefer Sylvia Plath's - but it's a close call. Shelley has crafted what has probably gone on to become the most well known sonnet in the English language (with stiff competition from Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of course), and yet I think Sylvia Plath's poem offers a greater range of emotion, complexity and depth. Still, that sentence of Shelley's blows me away. What a master stroke!
Ozymandias reading: • Ozymandias Animation
The Colossus reading: • Video (this reading is performed really well in character, with a slightly different interpretation of the poem in its bones, I think)