I cannot remember why I stuffed The Ring and the Book into a rucksack for a summer hitch-hiking tour of Europe. A cross between boastfulness and pragmatism, I expect: I needed something that could be sucked slowly. I think I expected to be half-bored, but can still recall the mounting surprise with which I turned the pages. To start with, it's an exciting murder story. A rotten Italian count, Guido, marries a delightful young girl and, jealous of his beautiful trophy, keeps her imprisoned. A monk called Caponsacchi (a heroic Browning lookalike) takes pity on her and helps her to flee. But the count pursues them across the countryside, eventually catches up with them, and stabs his pretty wife repeatedly in the face. It's an ugly crime, and we revisit it from many different perspectives. We hear from the victim, Pompilia, whispering bravely through her wounds; we hear from the monk who tried to rescue her; we even hear the self-justifying whinge of the murderer. We hear from the clever lawyers pleading their clients' guilt or innocence. And we hear from the Pope, called upon for an infallible judgement.

It's a great work. In one light, it can be seen as a nostalgic enterprise, the last gasp of a dying tradition - of long stories in verse. However, in another light, it seems pioneering. In its willingness to consider the merits of so many different points of view, it neatly punctures the authority of any one narrative position. The poem encourages us to see that most opinions are specious: partial, self-interested versions of the truth - little more than ingeniously rationalised prejudices. But Browning has the wit to suggest the reverse, too: that all people, the violent as well as the abused, have something to say about themselves - in short, that everyone is the central character of his or her own story.

The Ring and the Book suggested what Emma might have been like had it been written from Mr Elton's point of view (an unrequited love story); or what Le Morte d'Arthur would have been like had it been Mordred's tale (the revenge of a deserted child on his remote father). In its modest way, The Ring and the Book lit up the path towards modernism, with its shifty lack of faith in omniscience, its sceptical awareness of relative values. It didn't make me want to write a 500-page poem, but it did make me suspicious of all authorised versions - of the idea that there is only one thing to be said. However, I might be wrong.

Robert Winder's reviews appear monthly in the NS

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