Robert Browning's Romantic Irony in the Ring and the Book

Rigg's reassessment of Browning's The Ring and the Book suggests a new way to read the layers of irony that organize the narrative structure of the work. The author disrupts the sequence of monologues to reveal the pattern of a spiraling set of concentric circles, with each speaker situated on a circle according to his ability to know the truth about events that have led to murder.