Eng 1501

ENG1501/201/3/2014

Tutorial letter 201/3/2014
FOUNDATIONS IN ENGLISH LITERARY
STUDIES

ENG1501
Semesters 1 & 2
Department of English Studies

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
FEEDBACK AND EXAMINATION GUIDELINES

Open Rubric

ENG1501/201
FEEDBACK ON ASSIGNMENT 01

Dear student
In this feedback letter, we have given you some pointers about how you could have answered the five questions on the poem. We expected you to expand these ideas sufficiently in order to earn full marks. Please note that you will pass only if you do the following:
(a)
(b)
(c)

express yourself in intelligible English; engage fully with the way the poem uses language; and avoid merely summarising the content of the poem.

Assignment 01: Poetry (Seasons Come to Pass)
Read the text of the poem below and then answer the questions that follow:

OZYMANDIAS (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

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Question 1

What kind of man was the Pharaoh Ozymandias, do you think? Quote from the poem to substantiate your answer.
The “frown” (line 4), “wrinkled lip” (line 5) and “sneer of cold command” (line 5) suggest that Ozymandias was an imposing, unsympathetic, disparaging, contemptuous, cruel and haughty person. The reference to himself as “King of
Kings” (line 10), in the inscription on the pedestal, suggests that he was a man of great arrogance and conceit. This impression is reinforced by the words that follow:
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” (line 11), which suggest a boastful attitude and excessive pride in his achievements.
Question 2

The poet takes great care to describe, in lines 4 and 5, the „passions‟ of
Ozymandias that are „stamped on these lifeless things‟ (line 7). What is the effect of the juxtaposition of “passions” and „lifeless‟? What is Shelley suggesting about human ambition?
The juxtaposition of “passions” and “lifeless” emphasizes the contrast between liveliness and energy and what is dead, devoid of life; between the ruler,
Ozymandias, whose “passions” suggests a man of strong, intense emotions, and the statue, a “lifeless” sculpture made of stone. Ironically, what has survived the ravages of time (albeit in pieces) is the sculpture, a work of art, while the great ruler,
Ozymandias, and all his accomplishments have been destroyed by time. Shelley is suggesting the transient (fleeting, short-lived,) nature of human ambition and life. It does not matter how powerful one is, the passage of time erodes and reduces to insignificance the grandest of ambitions and the most powerful of people.

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Question 3

The “hand” and the “heart” (line 8) are, of course, the hand and heart of the sculptor, not Ozymandias. Discuss the irony in this fact, referring particularly to lines 10 and 11.
The inscription in lines 10 and 11 (“Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!”) suggests a man who is extremely proud and boastful of his achievements and power. However, the passage of time has eroded and destroyed both him and all his works. All that remains is a ruined statue in a desert. It is ironic that, as important and powerful as he thought he was, the only remnant of him is the sculpture, a work of art that captures the memory of his arrogance and conceit. Art, or “these lifeless things”, has endured over the hubris (pride) and passions of Ozymandias, a once great and powerful ruler. It is the interpretation and skill of the artist and his work, his
„hand‟ and his „heart‟ that endures to reveal the nature of Ozymandias.
Question 4

An atmosphere of degeneration and despair is created in the poem. How does the poet achieve this? Quote from the poem to substantiate your answer.
An atmosphere of degeneration and despair is created by the image of the huge broken statue, with its “trunkless legs” (line 2) and “shattered visage” (line 4). The statue is referred to as a “colossal wreck” (line 13) lying in pieces in the desert, legs in one place and the head in another. The representation of a once powerful human figure remains merely as fragments of marble or stone. The landscape of the desert further emphasizes the atmosphere of despair by evoking a place that is desolate and “bare” (line 13) with little or no water or vegetation; and “lone,” (line 14), further indicating how solitary, bleak and destructive the surroundings are.

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Question 5

The poet makes use of the poetic device of alliteration in the last two lines.
Identify the words that make up this figure of speech and comment on the effect this device creates here.
There is alliteration in “boundless and bare” (line13) and “lone and level” (line
14).The alliteration serves to reinforce the vivid image of the desert that is created in the poem. The words “boundless”, “bare”, “lone” and “level” enforce the immensity of the desert‟s size and the bleakness of the landscape which appears totally empty and monotonous. The use of the conjunction “and” between the two words in each phrase adds a sense of balance to this description of the natural world. This balance is lacking in the grandiose statements that were placed on the statue of the king. The image of the desert is employed to offset the foolishness and arrogance of the oncegreat ruler, Ozymandias, who thought so highly of himself, but whose stone statue is now broken and abandoned in an empty, desolate and lonely place. It indicates that the vastness and indifference of nature remains eternal, where humans and their works will quickly fade and perish.

☺We

hope you enjoyed working on this assignment. Please read your other

prescribed poems with as much attention as we have devoted to this one. In this way, you will make sure you prepare adequately for the examination.

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PRE-EXAMINATION INFORMATION
Welcome to ENG1501. In this module we are aiming to do two things:



We want to inspire you to enjoy the diversity and artistry of English literature; We also want to introduce you to some of the ways in which we can think about English literature and write about it academically and critically.

Your examination will demonstrate how well we (and you) have succeeded. The format of the exam paper is as follows:
You will be presented with FIVE examination questions, one on each text:
Introduction to English Literary Studies, Seasons Come to Pass/Poetry, The Catcher in the Rye, The Road to Mecca and When Rain Clouds Gather). The examination is two hours long and you will have to answer two of the FIVE questions. Each question is out of 50, although your assignment mark counts 25% of your final mark.
The questions on The Catcher in the Rye, The Road to Mecca and When Rain
Clouds Gather are essay-type questions. Each of these should be answered in an essay (about 2-4 pages long) and each question focuses on a controversial or ambiguous aspect of the text. You will need to answer these questions in essays that are argued coherently, and present evidence for your point of view.
When we mark your examinations, we‟ll be looking for:
1.

2.

A sustained focus on each examination question. Answers that retell the story of any of your prescribed texts will definitely fail on the grounds that they do not address the questions adequately.
Clear and grammatically correct expression in English. Because this is so important, it is worth while taking a few minutes at the end of your exam to read over what you have written for each question to make sure your grammar, spelling and style are as good as they can be. Below are our contact details. Do not hesitate to contact us if you need any help:

Ms Ruth Scheepers

[phone] [e-mail]

Ms B Janari

[phone] [e-mail]

Ms R.H Latha

[phone] [e-mail]

Prof S.I Raditlhalo

(012 429 8928 [e-mail]

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