SOURCE: Hiemstra, Anne. “Browning and History: Synecdoche and Symbolism in The Ring and the Book.” Studies in Browning and His Circle 13 (1985): 47-58.

In the following essay, Hiemstra maintains that Browning greatly augmented the biblical allusions present in the “Old Yellow Book,” to the point that in The Ring and the Book “biblical symbolism functions as the element that controls the ultimate meaning of this historical episode.”

The common critical approach of modern scholars to The Ring and the Book has been to focus on only two aspects of the poem, namely Browning's manipulation of point of view through the dramatic monologue, and his embedding, consciously or unconsciously, biographical detail in the work. In their analyses of Browning's use of the dramatic monologue, critics focus on the extent to which it was a viable method to evoke the “universal truth” that Browning saw inherent in the obscure seventeenth-century criminal...