Key Terms

📖 Key Terms

Frame narrative

A story within a story — Shelley's speaker reports what a traveller said, who quoted an ancient inscription. Each layer distances the reader further from Ozymandias's original authority.

Dramatic irony

When the reader understands something a character does not. Ozymandias commands kings to "despair" — but the reader knows there are no kings left to hear him, and no works left to see.

Hubris

Extreme, arrogant pride — especially the pride that refuses to acknowledge human limits. From ancient Greek tragedy, where hubris leads to inevitable downfall. Ozymandias's "King of Kings" self-title is hubris at its peak.

Semantic field

A cluster of words drawn from the same area of meaning. Shelley uses a semantic field of scale and destruction ("colossal", "boundless", "vast", "decay") to contrast the ambition of the boast with the reality of the ruin.

Volta

The "turn" in a sonnet — the moment the poem shifts direction or argument. In Ozymandias, the inscription in lines 10-11 functions as a kind of volta: the tyrant's voice enters and then immediately collapses against the final lines of silence.

Petrarchan sonnet

A 14-line poem traditionally divided into an 8-line octave and a 6-line sestet. Shelley uses this model loosely — the irregular rhyme scheme and absence of a neat closing couplet enact the poem's argument that no system (poetic or political) holds its shape forever.