THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH': THE RELATION OF PARTS TO THE WHOLE IN THE RING AND THE BOOK

Abstract

    'The Truth, The Whole Truth': The Relation Of Parts To The
Whole In The Ring and the Book
Yıldız KILIÇ

   The Ring and the Book transcends 'fragmented' pluralistic isolation to achieve a single philosophical statement on the illusiveness and ambiguity of truth. The impetus is essentially a reaction specifically to that part of the Great Chain of Being that establishes man as a lesser entity to God. The selfconscious subjectivism of Aestheticism in the late Nineteenth Century represents a culminative conclusion to Organicist development, so that humanity is no longer measured against the standard of Nature (imbued with the
Divine) but exists by merit of its own measure: Humanism - the sanctity of human existence - is a standard by which the individual is to be recognised as Organic personification of earthly ideal, a superior creation on par with the superior entity of God. To self-defined Nineteenth-Century individualism the abject dislocation that the Chain of Being instigates between man and the divine, which subsequently associates man with the bestial is illustration of the
ambiguity of the human condition at yet another conceptual junction: that man's parity to the Divine, indeed his parallel worth, is defined by his proximity to truth.

Keywords

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THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH': THE RELATION OF PARTS TO THE WHOLE IN THE RING AND THE BOOK

Abstract

Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book (1868-9), as a work dominated by the concept of truth, derives stature from the profundity of its ultimate implications. Each of its twelve books, amounting in total to 21.000 lines of blank verse. stand with absolute conviction as factual interpretations that are in reality no more than a collection of indulgent personal opinions. As
a collective whole, these same accounts of implausible 'factuality' constitute an edifice that stands for the essentially illusive and ambiguous nature of Truth. Hence, from a presupposition of truth emerges the revelation of its nonexistence, from which dawns the possibility of a truth - achievable only by means of an accumulative pluralistic over-view. The significance that truth is
never achievable in the absolute, that at best it is knowable and then chiefly recognisable only by means of its contrast with falsehood, is a direct achievement of the poem's multi-part structure. 

Keywords

• TRUTH
• WHOLE
• Robert

References

1. BROWNING, Robert, 711e Ring and the Book Penguin Books Ltd, London. 1990.
2. COLMER, John. Coleridge to Catch 22: Images of Society Macmillan Press Ltd .. London. 1978
3. FORSTER, E.M., AJpects of the Novel Edward Arnold Ltd. London. 1963.
4. HAIR, Donald. S., Browning's Erperiments with Genre University of Toronto Press. Toronto. 1972.
5. HALLIDAY, F.E .. Robert Browning : life and Works Jupiter Books, London. 1975.
6. MILL, J. S., Three Essays: On Liberty Oxford University Press. Oxford, 1985.
7. TRACY, Clarence. Browning's Mind and Art Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh and London. 1968.