SOURCE: Hines, Susan C. “A Trial Reading of Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book.” Studies in Browning and His Circle 18 (1990): 28-33.

In the following essay, Hines examines the relationship between the ring and legal metaphors in The Ring and the Book. “Like the ring metaphor,” she observes, “the legal metaphor also comes full circle; and, as it falls back upon itself, it promotes an endless cycle of interpretation.”

When Robert Browning published his final volume of The Ring and the Book in 1869, he enjoyed instant success. Not only had he made a substantial and unique contribution to the poetical genre, but he had supplied his public with a fascinating addition to what had been a rapidly-growing sub-genre in the late nineteenth century: the Victorian crime drama. Despite the text's lofty religious and philosophical dimensions, much of The Ring and the Book's immediate popularity hinged upon the...