The Stones of Venice and “The Bishop Orders His Tomb”

1. Why, according to Ruskin, was “Gothic” considered a “term of . . . reproach” (1432)? Why does he think Gothic architecture should be admired?
2. Why does Ruskin think that the “savageness” of Gothic architecture should be regarded as a “noble character” (1434)? Why does he come to assert that “no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect” (1441)?
3. Ruskin’s discussion of Gothic architecture becomes a critique of industrial capitalism in modern England. What is his view of industrialism, in terms of the effects of the division of labor on the worker, and of the emphasis on perfection, uniformity, and “finish”?
4. What is the significance of Browning’s Bishop’s church being named after Saint Praxed? of the Bishop opening with a reference to Ecclesiastes 1:2?
5. What aspects of his tomb is the dying Bishop concerned about? What is the significance of this?
6. In describing the lump of lapis lazuli he seems to have stolen after a fire at the church, the Bishop likens it to “a jew’s head” in size and “a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast” (43-44) in color. What does this language reveal about the Bishop?
7. For Ruskin, the Renaissance did not represent a high point in Western art, but a decline from the heights achieved in the late Middle Ages. In the “relentless requirement of perfection,” Ruskin writes at the end of the excerpt from The Stones of Venice, we find “the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe” (1442). As the Norton editors note in their opening footnote to “The Bishop Orders His Tomb,” Ruskin would later remark that Browning captured in this poem all that was wrong with the Renaissance. Why does Ruskin read the poem this way? Site specific evidence from the poem.