"The book was central to the evolution of Romanticism from a specifically English and insular aesthetic to a universal political and philosophical force," writes the anonymous author. The various literary sources of the poem are fascinatingly explored in this essay which suggests that Volney's The Ruins of Empires (a French work appearing in English translation in 1792) was of major significance, and not only to Ozymandias. Shelley could not have seen it at the time of writing, and he had never been to Egypt, but he would have certainly seen illustrations of ruined cities and statues. This head would later be shipped to the British Museum. Shelley's interest in Egyptology was already established, as revealed by some of the imagery of an earlier poem, Alastor, but perhaps it had been rekindled in part by the news of the excavation of the colossal head of Rameses II.
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