SOURCE: Zietlow, Paul. “The Ascending Concerns of The Ring and the Book: Reality, Moral Vision, and Salvation.” Studies in Philology 84, no. 2 (spring 1987): 194-218.

In the following essay, Zietlow argues that Browning's main intention in The Ring and the Book is to save souls, and contends that “to advance toward salvation the reader must bear witness to ineffable spiritual truths by experiencing internal rebirth and resurrection.”

Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book severely challenges the reader's capacities for recognizing and assenting to empirical and moral truths. As a representation of general reality, the poem portrays a world fallen, unredeemed, presided over by evil—a world in which even the most generous and humane ideas of earthly community and relationship, although conceptions of possibility superior to prevailing realities, are no more than imitations of what cannot be imitated. The poem calls for commitment to an uncompromising moral vision culminating...