Stewart, Gwendolyn O.

Browning' s most important concern in The Ring and the Book: is to explore
the concept of heroism as it applies to modern man. This interest is manifested
in the book's three priest-heroes representing three ages of man
and three categories of knighthoods young, virile Caponsacchi, the fledgling
Green Knight; the intellectual old Pope, an innocent White Knight;
and the poised poet, the involved Red Knight of middle years. The central
chapters of this paper, delineating the trials of these three knights, assess
them as heroes and determine the relationship of the portraits of
Caponsacchi and The Pope to the poet, while the conclusion summarizes the
evolution of Browning's heroic ideal: the balanced, out-going man continually
striving to encourage human communication and progress as opposed to
the vain Renaissance prophet, the "overreacher," whose utilitarian excesses
Mario Praz sees in nineteenth-century Comtean positivism and twentieth-century
Fordism.

This study was undertaken in order to provide the reader
of Jude the Obscure· with a better understanding of the
nature of the directing influences upon the main character
insofar as they control his actions and thus his destiny.
Jude Fawley's misperceptions of Christminster, Arabella
Donn, and Sue Bridehead are the direct result of his
idealistic nature and contribute to his tragic demise.
Jude's inability to cope with reality manifests itself in
a recurrent death-wish which is the direct result of the
failure of his idealistic misperceptions to endure for long
in the light of reality. Therefore, the true tragedy of Jude
is his inability to see that it is his own nature that has
brought him to his fate and not some outside, impersonal force.