The politics of language in books II-IV of The ring and the book : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University
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1992
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Massey University
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Established commentary on Robert Browning's dramatic monologue The Ring and the Book has largely been restricted to accounts of subjectivity. This study continues that long tradition by examining speakers' production of subjectivity, but extends the discussion to considering the political implications of the personal word. Theories of the Russian literary theorist and critic Mikhail Bakhtin are employed to observe individual speakers' constructions of selfhood. However, unlike the traditional monological model, Bakhtin's model of dialogism allows for further examination of the personal word when it inevitably encounters, and subsequently struggles politically with, social and institutional discourses. Hence, this study is distinct from the long tradition of monological criticism of The Ring and the Book in its examination of the personal word as political contest.
I focus upon three books that have received relatively little direct critical attention in comparison to others within The Ring and the Book. Books II-IV, Half-Rome, Other Half-Rome, and Tertium Quid, often called the opening triad, differ from the others in the poem because the speakers act as social figures--both personal and representative of social views. These books also offer an advantage of being possibly the least critically trammelled of the twelve books that make up the poem. Furthermore, commentary which does attend to this triad almost invariably consigns these speakers to the role of chorus or supporting cast to the brighter 'stars' whose narratives follow.
Whereas standard readings of the poem have tended to privilege one or more books as a location of truth, the dialogic model allows a re-examination of the poem as a progression of dramatic monologues without the need to privilege any particular speaker's word. As a modest first step in this enterprise, this thesis examines the opening triad for evidence of a struggle through language by the speakers, at both the personal and the political levels. Bakhtin would perhaps observe that this thesis, too, now joins the political struggle of language by
becoming a prior utterance that could influence future critical commentary of The Ring and the Book.
I am indebted to Warwick Slinn for his rigorous and provocative encouragement, to Michelle Dawson for acting as my interlocutor, and to my son Jacob for his support:
A word in the mouth of a particular individual person is a product of the living interaction of social forces.
V.N.Volosinov [From Preface]
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Browning, Robert 1812-1889