Respones to The Ring and the Book

The critic Robert W. Buchanan discusses Robert Browning’s poem The Ring and the Book and sheds a different kind of light on it. He is making the claim that while the same Browning we know and love is strongly promenade throughout the poem, it is a different kind of Browning than what audiences are used to. He compares his humor to Charles Dickens saying it is not as open and social as Dickens, but shares some of the same tendencies. He then goes on to compare Browning and Shakespeare through the subject being tragic. The critic thinks that this use of other authors, while Browning staying true to his own art is a beautiful way to style the poem. This difference in writing is what keeps the audience engaged and waiting for what is to come next. While still being able to know we are reading a work of Browning’s, we are able to find a new style to follow.

In the letter to William Allingham from Dante Gabriel Rossettti is saying how he really likes the poem that Browning has created. He thinks it is artistic and sheds a creative light on some issues. However, he discusses how Browning is hard to follow as a writer. He goes in too many directions and creates poems that readers become lost and confused in. He thinks that he makes too large of stretches between characters that seem unrealistic losing the interest of some audiences. However, it seems that if Browning were to take the time to get organized with his ideas that the audience would be able to see his brilliance. This is something that Browning must be careful about because losing the audience that he has set up is not a trend that he needs to do. Instead he should further engage them and guide them through the story.

This issue of confusion and misunderstanding becomes apparent again in the unsigned review in the Saturday Review. The poem is described to take odd twists and make leaps that seem unpredictable. The characters’ morality becomes an issue for the writer as well. This reoccurrence of the same type of review shows that this type of creativity is not always one that speaks to all types of people. Browning needs better guidance while writing something so enduring his ideas seem to be there, but lost within his own creative mind.