English

• Assessment Objectives (AO)


  • AO1: Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to: maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response, use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.
  • AO2: Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
  • AO3: Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.
  • AO4: Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation
• The examiner will expect you to: Compare and contrast in every paragraph, Give relevant examples/quotes, Don't just explain what happens, explain why, Give more than 1 idea about possible meanings, Use accurate language to discuss devices/structure
• Glossary of Devices


  • Sounds: Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Cacophony, Onomatopoeia, Repetition, Rhyme, Rhythm
  • Meanings and Linguistic Devices: Allegory, Allusion, Ambiguity/Ambiguous, Analogy, Cliché, Connotation/Connote, Contrast, Denotation/Denote, Euphemism, Hyperbole, Irony, Metaphor, Oxymoron, Paradox, Personification, Pun, Simile
  • Arrangement/Structure: Verse, Stanza, Rhetorical Question, Rhyme Scheme, Enjambment, Form, Fixed Forms, Pathetic Fallacy, Foreshadowing
  • Imagery/Tone: Sensory Imagery, Synaesthesia, Tone/Mood
• Mock


  To make a model of, but also to make fun of
• Antique


  Suggests the place is old and steeped in history, but also it may be out of date and old fashioned
• The statue is barely standing, the rest is ruined and missing. Suggesting that it is being eaten away by time and the desert, a futile struggle to survive where nobody is around to care
• Shattered visage


  Broken face, it is unrecognisable, a statue to someone and we can no longer tell who, has no purpose anymore
• Cold command, sneer


  Suggests Ozymandias' character as powerful and arrogant, ironic now there is nothing left
• The tone, indicated by the exclamation is strong and authoritative, irony is that nobody is listening
• Colossal


  Metaphor for his ego rather than the statue
• The lone and level sands outlast the statue

  Juxtaposed to the power and ego of the statue
• Sands are also iconic of time
• Written by Shelly in a collection in 1819, it was inspired by the recent unearthing of part of a large statue of the Egyptian Pharoah, Ramesses II
• The reference to the stone statue is likely a direct reference to the statues and sculptures like the one which was unearthed, which the ancient Egyptians made
• On the base of the statue is written (translated) "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works"
• The Statue of Ramesses which now sits in the London Museum
• Structure


  • Written in a sonnet with loose iambic pentameter
  • Iambic pentameter is pairs (iams, of sounds da-dum) with 5 (pentameter, think of pent like in pentagon) in a line making 10 syllables overall
  • Sonnets were generally popular romantic or love poems, perhaps this being a love poem about Ozymandias, a joke about the rulers ego
  • The Rhyme scheme is irregular, perhaps symbolic of the broken statue itself, no longer perfect
• Themes


  • Looking at power and conflict
  • The statue in the poem, broken and falling apart in the desert with nobody to care is an allegory of Ozymandias and of every powerful man or woman, the idea that they will also drift away until they are just another grain of sand
• The poem is a ironic memorial to the ego of a ancient Pharaoh
• Power, like the statue is lost to the sands which in turn represent time
• The poem is about the statue of a long dead king
• The statue is breaking down, this shows how people are forgetting the dead king
• Power does not last forever
• The poem is 44 lines in blank verse (no real structure)
• The work is in iambic pentameter to give it a consistent pace
• As the poem progresses the journey the poet is on becomes rougher and words like 'and' are repeated to give it a breathless pace and feel
• By the end of this you should know

  • Higher marks
  • Lower marks
• The poem is about a journey on the river
• Mountain


  A huge peak, black and huge, as if with voluntary power instinct, upreared its head
• The mountain is shown in the poem like a great angry entity and represents the full might and power of nature
• The mountain seems to take offense at the poet going too far or too 'lustily'
• You could imagine it like a game of 'chicken' where the poet is rowing toward the mountain, the closer he gets the more menacing it appears before he backs away
• The poem is 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning
• Robert Browning was a poet in the 19th century
• The poem is loosely based on the Duke of Ferrara and is written from his perspective, talking to a messenger about arranging his next marriage
• The assumption being that he was dissatisfied with his former wife and had her killed
• Themes


  • Power and Conflict is shown in the way the speaker (the Duke of Ferrara) is showing off his power and also suggesting the control he had over the Duchess's life
  • There is also conflict between who he presents or wants himself to be and who he really is as a character
• Structure


  • The poem is an example of dramatic monologue (a speech given by one character)
  • It uses a large number of pauses (caesuras) in the poem along with lines that flow into one another (enjambment) in order to try and capture the tone of the speaker talking away to the messenger and adding in tangents (small opinions and asides)
  • The poem uses rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter this reflects the style of romantic poets at the time, despite how this poem is much more sinister and dark
  • The Duke of Ferrara is the only character that speaks despite the fact he is talking to someone, he never lets them speak
• The poem is 'Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred Lord Tennyson
• The poem is about the Crimean War