SOURCE: "Browning's Murder Mystery: The Ring and the Book and Modern Theory," in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 27, Nos. 3-4, Autumn-Winter, 1989, pp. 79-98.

In the following essay, Shaw analyzes the way in which Browning makes use of critical theories—particularly deconstructionism and hermeneutics—in The Ring and the Book. Shaw considers the main characters to be caricatures of various critical viewpoints and focuses on Tertium Quid and Guido specifically as the primary deconstructionists, and on the Pope as a representative of hermeneutical criticism.

Problems associated with contemporary deconstruction and hermeneutics were familiar to Browning and already understood by him in his Roman murder mystery, The Ring and the Book. This assertion may seem less contentious if we recall that critical theories, though rich in their accidental varieties, are poor in their essential types. Deconstruction, for example, was a favorite exercise of Victorians like Pater, who dismantled metaphysics in Plato and...