Robert Browning, the Ring and the Book

by Robert Browning, Edward Dowden, Edward Berdoe

Book Overview

Robert Browning is one of the most significant Victorian Poets and, of course, English Poetry.Much of his reputation is based upon his mastery of the dramatic monologue although his talents... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300026854
• ISBN13: 9780300026856
• Release Date: May 1981
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 707 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

nice edition of an under-studied text

Fascinating novel-length poem exploring the various sides in a real life 16th century Italian murder trial. This edition is nice, with critical reviews from Robert Browning's contemporaries. A Victorian poem that isn't read as often as it should be.

The unknown masterpeice of English literature

As an English major at the University of Pittsburgh, I was never exposed to this series of dramatic monologues. It's a pity, because when I finally stumbled across it, Browning went from being just another 19th-century poet to my favorite English language poet of them all, at one fell swoop. The Ring and the Book is based on a real-life murder trial in 17th century Rome. The story is told from multiple perspectives, changing with every new section of the book; we hear from the "Man on the Street", the murderer, the victim on her death-bed, and even the Pope. The details of the story are far too convoluted to explain in summary and do anything resembling justice to the book, but it can be safely said that once you've begun, you're in for a whirlwind ride through a carnival of a trial that makes the O.J. Simpson affair look like a parking-ticket dispute by comparison. The truly stand-out feature of The Ring and the Book is not in the story itself, however, but in the telling. Browning handles the English language like a virtuoso emulating angel's choruses on a Stradivarius. If the book suffers any single flaw, it is the simple fact that at times, Browning writes these lines almost TOO well, making it difficult for the reader to pay attention to the actually progression of the story, as said reader becomes entraced by the beauty of the poetry. (In particular, I consider Caponsacchi's description of the flight from Arezzo beginning at line 1152 of Book VI to be one of the best written passages in literature of all time.) Dramatic blank verse hasn't seen genius of this level since Milton wrote of the angelic Fall. It's a pity this book isn't more widely recognized and discussed, for it deserves recognition as one of the best-constructed poetic stories of history, and the pinnacle of 19th century authorship.