I. Introduction
Most contemporary western literary criticism theories come from the analysis of novels and are also applied to novel criticism. But if we apply these principles,
Through the interpretation of poetry, we will have a new understanding of poetry. Take Shelley's sonnet Ozymandias as an example, we can use Syria.
Event theory and reader response criticism theory are used to analyze the theme of this poem. The original text is as follows
Ozmandis *
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an ancient country.
Who said, "Two huge stone legs without legs."
Standing in the desert. On the beach near them,
Half-sunk, lying with a broken face, his brow furrowed,
And wrinkled lips, sneering cold orders,
Tell its sculptors about those passionate readings.
They still exist, printed on these inanimate things,
Laugh at their hands and feed their hearts.
These words appeared on the pedestal-
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look at my work, you are strong and desperate! "
There is nothing left but that. Bypass rot
Huge wreckage, boundless, bare
Lonely and flat beaches stretch into the distance. '
Wang Zuoliang translated as follows [2]:
Australian (1)
After coming back from overseas, I saw an ancient desert country.
There are half-destroyed stone statues, but only huge legs.
Squatting among the gravel. It's like falling off your head,
Half buried in the sand, but the face is still terrible,
Sneer, bossy arrogance,
It shows that the sculptor has seen through the master's heart.
To make the stone look simple,
Carved hands and hearts like the Lord
It's gone early. The characters on the pedestal are impressive:
"I am the king of kings,
Great achievements, dare to convince the gods! "
There is nothing but around the ruins,
Lonely, flat, empty, boundless,
Extending to four desolate directions.
(1) Aussimantis, king of Egypt in the 3rd century BC/kloc-0, Remisis II.
The world. His tomb is in Thebes, shaped like a huge sphinx.
Second, the open theme
When analyzing poetry, we usually pay attention to the theme of poetry. In ancient China, lyric poetry was the main theme. From the theory of poetic expression in Shangshu Yaodian to Wang Guowei's theory of "artistic conception" in human thorns, they all pay attention to the origin, function and aesthetic characteristics of poetry. However, in ancient China, there was a lack of large-scale heroic epic. Aristotle's Poetics pays attention to the plot and the two functions of literature and art: pleasure and enlightenment. Although Shelley advocated inspiration, he was a revolutionary in action. "Poetry makes everything beautiful; It makes the most beautiful things more beautiful, and it adds beauty to the ugliest things; It tore open the stale veil of the world and revealed the naked and sleeping beauty-this beauty is the spirit of various forms in the world. " [3] Shelley is a romantic poet who actively resists oppression and exploitation. His sonnet Ozymandias can be regarded as a hint of tyranny, despotism and oppression in the world. But if we use narratology theory and reader criticism theory to analyze, this poem is an open text with a wider theme.
First, this poem can be regarded as a mockery of power. When Ramses, the king of ancient Egypt, ordered the carving of his permanent monument, the craftsman showed his mockery of the king with his works of art; The once glorious king was inevitably submerged by time and became unknown, leaving only broken stone statues for future generations to remember. And this broken stone statue will eventually disappear as time goes by. This kind of power, achievements and glory are fleeting, and the king's wish to go down in history is also empty.
Second, this poem reflects that art and beauty cannot last forever. As a symbol of beauty, artistic stone statues have been shattered by wind and rain. How long can this broken stone statue last? No one can answer. In the face of time, all good things will become imperfect and eventually disappear.
Thirdly, this poem reflects that only time is eternal, and everything, including power, artistic beauty and even human beings, will disappear with the passage of time, leaving only boundless nature.
Thirdly, from the perspective of narrative theory.
1. First person narrative style
Generally speaking, the narrators in narrative poems mostly appear in the form of the first person and the third person. "Using the first person has many advantages. First of all, we can broaden the thinking space and let the narrator and the author have a moment of thinking; Secondly, the reader can then walk into the flesh and blood that the author thinks and tells. " [4] In this sonnet, the author tells the reader two stories in a first-person narrative way: the story of the traveler and the story of the king. The narrator "I" listened to the story told by the traveler. The traveler who came back from ancient Egypt described to me what he had seen and heard: the stone carver lost his trunk and stood in the desert. Broken people are half buried in the nearby sand.
Face, frowning, lips closed, with a cold authoritative ridicule expression. Its sculptor pondered these expressions and carved them on lifeless stones. The other is the story of the king. The king said, "If you are not convinced, if you want to compare with me and see my achievements, you will have to look at the ocean and sigh." It is necessary to know the background here. Ramses, the second king of ancient Egypt, created great achievements and established.
The huge mausoleum is carved with its own stone statue, named Ozymandias, hoping that its achievements will last forever. Here, "I" is the narrator and can also be regarded as the voice of the author. The existence of the author's voice does not need to be recognized by his or her direct statement, but can be expressed in the narrator's language by some means or some nonverbal clues such as behavior structure, thus conveying the differences in values or judgments between the author and the narrator [5]. The author intervenes in the story through "I" to express the author's feelings, and the author's figure appears and disappears. But at the same time, "I" is not entirely the author, and what "I" hears is what the reader hears. Readers can therefore talk to the narrator and seek the same feelings.
2. Double narrative structure
The story structure of this poem has two layers of narration. Surface narrative: the story of travelers, "I" is the audience; The craftsmen witnessed the story of the king. The story of the king is interspersed with the story of the traveler, because the story of the king is told by the traveler. The two stories are intertwined, forming the story I heard, that is, the deep narrative: the story I heard is the story the reader read, and I relayed the traveler's story to the reader. This structure spans time and space, and condenses endless time and boundless space into a few minutes and sonnets, which helps readers to exert their imagination in such an open text and also helps to reveal the time theme of this poem.
3. Multiple narrative voices
James's breakthrough view on traditional narrative theory is that he opposes the view that narrative should be plot-centered since Aristotle and advocates that narrative should be character-centered [6]. For the role, sound is essential. The voice of the role reflects the personality, identity and status of the role. In this poem, the voice of the traveler and the king is marked, expressed by Said and quotation marks; "I" and the sculptor's voice are unmarked. "I" is just a listener in poetry, while the sculptor has a humble position and no right to speak. The ruling class does not allow the oppressed to express their true feelings, and he can only express his thoughts through works of art. This intentional silence is a necessity, which is more powerful and can achieve the effect of "telling more in silence than what they once told in their voices". The four voices show the same scene from four different angles: in the desert of vast expanse, ancient ruins tell the vicissitudes of time. Noble kings and humble craftsmen, elegant art and barren historical sites are all blurred by the river of time.
Fourthly, the angle of readers' reaction criticism.
All works must be read by its aesthetic subject-readers, and the interpretation, reading method and meaning generation of the text are inseparable from readers. Fisher believes that the reader creates everything he sees in the text [7]. The meaning of a sentence (a paragraph, a novel, a poem) is not directly related to the meaning in the sentence, or in other words, the information conveyed by a sentence, that is, the information of a sentence, constitutes a part of its meaning, but it is by no means completely equivalent to the meaning itself. It is nothing more than the whole experience of a sentence, not a description of itself, including any comments I want to make. Using this theory, let's analyze this poem. When readers first read "I met a traveler … Who said that?", they will think that this is a traveler telling his trip. At the moment, readers are appreciating and regretting the ancient art, feeling that the years are ruthless and the beauty of art cannot last forever. When the reader reads "Look at my work ……", the reader reads the story of the king again. At this time, the reader laughed at the king. The king wants to live forever, just as the ancient emperor of China looked for an elixir of life. In the last two lines, all kinds of sounds are quiet, only the vast desert extends into the distance. The author uses vastness, bareness, loneliness and remoteness to give readers imagination. Narrative time has also been pulled back from ancient times to the present and even the future. At this moment, the reader seems to realize how small people are between heaven and earth, and time and space are eternal.
The poem is over, but the meaning of the text is not over. Because readers' life experiences and aesthetic tastes are different, their understanding and interpretation of the works will be different.
Ezelle, one of the representatives of the author's response criticism theory, put forward the "implied reader", which is not valid. It is the reader who the author asks to experience the text or make the text meaningful in his works [8]. If we look at the theme of this poem from the perspective of "hiding readers", we must first look at the author's intention. Shelley is an active romantic poet who cares about people's sufferings. He used poetry as a weapon to express himself.
Fighting spirit. Ode to the west wind, his masterpiece, illustrates this point. Similarly, we can also say that in this poem, he wants to satirize the present and speak for the oppressed. The kings of ancient Egypt have become history, but tyranny still exists today. Time can change everything, and will eventually change the exploitation system. Have you seen the once brilliant king and his great works? Nowhere to find, only broken walls.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion
Drawing lessons from narratology theory provides a new method and perspective for analyzing narrative poems. The reader response criticism theory makes the text more open. Author, text and reader are an organic whole. The author's thoughts can be expressed in the text, and readers have different reading experiences. The most successful reading is this: the two selves created in reading, the author and the reader, can find complete harmony.
Consistent.
Author: Huang Zhong
The original text was transferred from: /archiver/? tid- 1534.html
* percy bysshe shelley is the husband of mary shelley (the author of Frankenstein) and Byron's peer and friend. He is widely regarded as the best poet in The Romantic Period and perhaps the greatest English poet of all time. As a philosopher and atheist, Shelley was expelled from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. He lived a vagrant life and drowned in 1822.
Ozymandias was written in 18 18. In the same year, he began to write his most famous work Prometheus Liberated. At that time, he was roaming in Italy and Venice with Mary and Claire clermont, Byron's abandoned lover. The melancholy that affected him during that time was clearly shown in Ozymandias.
Perhaps the eponymous "Ozymandias" is better known as Ramses II, the Egyptian ruler in the 3rd century BC/KLOC-0. There are many different interpretations of this poem, but all of them focus on the irony in the Ozymandias Declaration, that is, the "powerful" should "look at my works and despair".
During this period, Shelley wrote many other poems, the most famous of which is Prometheus Liberated. Four years later, he died and drowned in the sea, firmly believing that his works would never be welcomed by the public.
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an ancient country.
Who said that-"Two huge stone legs without legs.
Standing in the desert ... on the beach near them,
Lying half-sunk with a broken face, his brow furrowed,
Wrinkled lips, a cold command sneer,
Tell its sculptors about those passionate readings.
However, those who survive, stepping on these inanimate things,
Laugh at their hands and feed their hearts;
These words appeared on the pedestal:
10 My name is Ozymandias, the king of kings.
Look at my work, powerful and desperate!
There is nothing left but that. Bypass rot
13 The huge wreckage is boundless and bare.
The lonely and flat desert extends into the distance. " -
notes
Shelley apparently wrote this sonnet in Marlowe, and had a friendly competition with Horace Smith. Horace Smith's sonnet of the same name was published on February 6, 2008, and also published in The Checker magazine, No.527, p. 73:
In the sandy silence of Egypt, alone,
Standing on a huge leg, far out.
The only shadow De Sutter knows:—
"I am the great Ozmandiaz," said the stone.
"The king of kings; This great city shows
"The miracle of my hand." -The city disappeared.
Nothing was revealed except the remaining leg.
This forgotten site of Babylon.
We want to know that some hunters may express.
As surprised as we are, when crossing the wilderness
London stood there and caught the wolf.
He came across some huge fragments and stopped to guess.
What powerful but unrecorded game?
Used to live in that ruined place.
5] Lip body. Shelley's lips 18 19.
6] Lines 6-8 cause some difficulties, but "survive" (7) must be a transitive verb, and its objects are "hand" and "heart" (8). The "passion" on Ozymandias's face, that is to say, still exists after his hands and heart. "The hand that mocks them" seems to be the sculptor's hand, which depicts the vanity of his theme in "these inanimate things"; And the "feeding heart" must be Ozymandias's own, relying on (perhaps) its own arrogance. Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews suggested that the eighth line should end with an ellipsis: "The same passion as feeding [their] hearts" (that is, those referred to by the pronoun "they" dominated by "ridicule") (Shelley's poem, II:1817-1.
9] These words appear:1819; This legend clarifies Bodl. Ms Shelley, e.4.
Ozymandias: Osmendias, the Greek name of Egyptian King Ramses II (BC 1304- 1237). Dior Dorus Sikoulos, in his history library. Loeb Classical Library, Volume 303 [Cambridge, Massachusetts. : Harvard University Press, 196 1]: I am 47 years old. On the pedestal of his statue (in Ramesome, across the Nile from Luxor), the inscription is "I am the king of kings, Osmendias. If someone wants to know how great I am and where I am lying, let him surpass one of my works. "
12] There is nothing left:1819; There is nothing left beside. Bode. Ms. Shelley e.4
Date of writing:1February 26th 18 17-1February 28th1817.
Form: Sonnet
Rhyme: ababacdcedefef
References:
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