The Ring and the Book is a long dramatic narrative poem, and, more specifically, a verse novel, of 21,000 lines, written by Robert Browning. It was published in four volumes from 1868 to 1869 by Smith, Elder & Co.[2]
Photograph of the prison where the three main figures were imprisoned
Plot outline
The book tells the story of a murder trial in Rome, Papal States in 1698, whereby an impoverished nobleman, Count Guido Franceschini, is found guilty of the murders of his young wife Pompilia (née Comparini) and her parents, having suspected his wife was having an affair with a young cleric, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Having been found guilty despite his protests and sentenced to death, Guido then appeals—unsuccessfully—to Pope Innocent XII to overturn the conviction. The poem comprises twelve books, ten of which are dramatic monologues spoken by different characters involved in the case (Count Guido speaks twice), usually giving a different account of the same events, and two books (the first and the last) spoken by the author.[3]
The poem is based on a real-life case. Under Roman law at the time, trials were not held in open court but rather by correspondence, whereupon each witness was required to submit a written statement for future adjudication. Browsing in a flea market in Florence in 1860, Browning came across a large volume of these written statements relating to the 1698 Franceschini case, and bought it on the spot. This volume – later known as the Yellow Book, after the colour of its aged covers – struck Browning as an excellent basis for a poem, but he was unable to get any further than the basic idea and often offered it as a subject to other writers, notably Alfred Tennyson, upon which to base a poem or novel. Luckily for posterity, there were no takers, and following his wife's death and his return to England, Browning revived his old plan for a long poem based on the Roman murder case almost eight years after the idea had first struck him.
The first book features a narrator, possibly Browning himself, who relates the story of how he came across the Yellow Book in the market and then giving a broad outline of the plot. The next two books give the views and gossip of the Roman public, apparently divided over which side to support in the famous case, who give differing accounts of the circumstances surrounding the case and the events which took place. Book 4 is spoken by a lawyer, Tertium Quid, who has no connection to the case but gives what he claims is a balanced, unbiased view of proceedings. Book 5 sees the start of the testimony from the trial, allowing the accused murderer Franceschini to give his side of the story, Book 6 is the young priest who was accused of being Pompilia's lover, and who asserts no adultery took place, that he simply tried to help Pompilia escape her abusive husband. Book 7 is the account of the dying Pompilia, mortally wounded but not killed in the attack.
Books 8 and 9 consist of depositions by the two opposing trial lawyers, and are filled with legal bickering and discussion of minute pieces of evidence that may or may not be related to the case as a whole; these could be interpreted as representing Browning's somewhat humorous attacks on the convoluted English and European legal system. Book 10 is perhaps the best-known of the monologues in the poem, as Pope Innocent XII considers Franceschini's appeal against a wider backdrop of moral and theological questions, including well-wrought reflections on the nature of good and evil. However, the Pope ultimately rejects the Franceschini's plea. Book 11 is similarly well-regarded and features Franceschini in his cell the night before his execution, wherein he begs for his life and seems, at times, to lose his mind. Book 12 returns to the initial narrator's voice (which may not or may be Browning's), which chronicles the conclusion and implications of the trial, as well as the poem.[4]
Reception and reputation
The Ring and the Book was, by some margin, the best-selling of all Browning's works during his lifetime. The depth of its philosophical, psychological, and spiritual insight is a step up from anything Browning produced before or after, and the poem was almost universally hailed as a work of genius, restoring the pioneering reputation among the first rank of English poets which Browning had lost with Sordello nearly thirty years previously. The book lost popularity with readers during the 20th century; after its printing by Scribner's in the early twentieth-century, The Ring and the Book was printed by W. W. Norton & Company in the 1960s and 1970s. It is now currently available, though still difficult to acquire affordably or in a non-scholarly reading edition, by Broadview Press.[5]
An illustrated guide of the region in which the story is set was published in 1913, entitled The Country of The Ring and the Book and written by Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet.[6][7]
Facsimile, translated, and free digital copies of the Old Yellow Book (the source documents for the poem) are also available, and they reveal the extent of conjecture and invention Browning used when writing the poem. After Browning's death, a cache of documents relating to the case almost twice the size of the Yellow Book was found in an Italian library in the 1920s.
Browning's son Pen donated the Old Yellow Book and a ring of Browning's to Balliol College, Oxford University. The ring was mistakenly thought to be the one described in the poem.[8]
Adaptations
The movie Rashomon (1950) by Kurosawa is based on two books by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon (1915), and Yabu no naka (1921). Akutagawa was Browning's first Japanese translator. As Jorge Luis Borges explains in one of his lectures[9], the main plot device of Rashomon is directly taken from The Ring and the Book.
The story is re-told in Derek Parker's 2001 true crime book Roman Murder Mystery: The True Story of Pompilia.
In July 2008, a two-part play adaptation of this story, set in poetry and prose by Martyn Wade and starring Anton Lesser as Browning, Roger Allam as Guido Franceschini and Louise Brealey as Pompilia, was broadcast as the BBC Radio 4 "Classic Serial". Abigail le Fleming produced and directed.
Pope Innocent XI, born Benedetto Odescalchi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 21 September 1676 until his death in 12 August 1689.
Pope Innocent XII, born Antonio Pignatelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 July 1691 to his death in September 1700.
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
The Massacreof the Innocents is a biblical story and myth recounted in the Nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Some Christians venerate the Holy Innocents as the first Christian martyrs, but modern scholarship finds no evidence that it happened outside the passages in Matthew.
Tertium quid refers to an unidentified third element that is in combination with two known ones. The phrase is associated with alchemy. It is Latin for "third something", a translation of the Greek triton ti. The Greek phrase was used by Plato, and by Irenæus. The earliest Latin example is by Tertullian, who used the phrase to describe a mixed substance with composite properties such as electrum, a somewhat different sense than the modern meaning.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, art name Chōkōdō Shujin (澄江堂主人), was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He took his own life at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.
Rashomon is a 1950 jidaigeki drama film directed and written by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and Takashi Shimura as various people who describe how a samurai was murdered in a forest, the plot and characters are based upon Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story "In a Grove", with the title and framing story based on "Rashōmon", another short story by Akutagawa. Every element is largely identical, from the murdered samurai speaking through a Shinto psychic to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows their ideal self by lying.
Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. In medieval Europe, like trial by combat, trial by ordeal, such as cruentation, was sometimes considered a "judgement of God" : a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf. The practice has much earlier roots, attested to as far back as the Code of Hammurabi and the Code of Ur-Nammu.
Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. Schechter's essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. His newest book, published in September 2023, is Murderabilia: A History of Crime in 100 Objects.
The Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism, the Great Occidental Schism, or the Schism of 1378, was a split within the Roman Catholic Church lasting from 20 September 1378 to 11 November 1417 in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon simultaneously claimed to be the true pope, and were eventually joined by a third line of Pisan claimants in 1409. The event was driven by international rivalries, personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon Papacy in particular being closely tied to the French monarchy.
In a Grove, also translated as In a Bamboo Grove, is a Japanese short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa first published in 1922. It was ranked as one of the "10 best Asian novels of all time" by The Telegraph in 2014. In a Grove has been adapted several times, most notably by Akira Kurosawa for his award-winning 1950 film Rashōmon.
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941.
Five Little Pigs is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in May 1942 under the title Murder in Retrospect and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in January 1943. The UK first edition carries a copyright date of 1942 and retailed at eight shillings while the US edition was priced at $2.00.
Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend is a 1996 book by Richard Wallace in which Wallace proposed a theory that British author Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles L. Dodgson (1832–1898), and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne (1829–1908) were responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders.
Beatrice Cenci was a Roman noblewoman imprisoned by her father, who repeatedly raped her. To escape the abuse and get away from the house, she killed him. The story of the murder and what led up to it shocked Europe. Despite outpourings of public sympathy, Beatrice Cenci was beheaded in 1599 after a lurid murder trial in Rome that gave rise to an enduring legend about her.
Towards Zero is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in June 1944, and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in July of the same year. The first US edition of the novel retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
The Outrage is a 1964 American Western film directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson and William Shatner. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, based on stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Like Kurosawa's film, four people give contradictory accounts of a rape and murder. Ritt utilizes flashbacks to provide these contradictory accounts.
Massacre in Rome is a 1973 Italian war drama film directed by George Pan Cosmatos about the Ardeatine massacre which occurred at the Ardeatine caves in Rome, 24 March 1944, committed by the Germans as a reprisal for a partisan attack against the SS Police Regiment Bozen. The film was based on the 1967 book Death in Rome by Robert Katz. An Italian court gave producer Carlo Ponti and director Cosmatos a six-month suspended sentence for their film which claimed Pope Pius XII knew of and did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal. The names of the victims are shown in the closing credits, as opposed to the cast credits and crew members.
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