英国维多利亚时期的诗人罗伯特·勃朗宁（1812-1889）的戏剧诗中有不少涉及文艺复兴时期艺术品的诗作，他也因此被评论界称为“艺术诗人”。这些诗作往往通过诗中人物对艺术品的态度或与艺术品的关系表达诗人对“艺术与人生”问题的思考。勃朗宁认识到人的有限性，将心灵的内在发展视为人生的道德法则，主张人在不断超越限度的行动中趋向心灵之“无限”，实现心灵之自由。而艺术以肯定人的“不完美”为前提，具有改造心灵的超越性力量。因为“完美”即静滞，象征死亡般的非人力量，心灵只有在“不完美”中才得以发展。文艺复兴时期的艺术表现了人在此岸世界因“不完美”而固有的有限性，通过揭示人的“不完美”，艺术突出了人的主体地位，彰显了人的内在神性。艺术通过表现人的有限性唤起心灵对“完美”的渴求，因此勾连着人生之不完美与心灵之“无限”。

本文选取的诗歌以勃朗宁与艺术相关的戏剧独白诗为主，通过分析诗中人物对待艺术品的方式和态度，揭示出艺术具有破除人生的有限性、使心灵达至无限的超越性力量。第一章为勃朗宁的艺术观和人生观寻找理论和现实依据。维多利亚时期围绕艺术本质问题展开争论，不论是罗斯金和莫里斯的“艺术劳动论”还是唯美主义运动“为艺术而艺术”的口号，都反映了艺术必然以人为本的人文精神。勃朗宁虽未直接发声，却早在诗歌和书信里表明艺术与人生之间存在紧密关联。第二章揭示勃朗宁意图批判的艺术与人生分离的取向。三首诗中的人物将艺术视为一种完美无缺的形式而将之与现实分离开来，这导致了他们与艺术品之间并没有真正的交流，因此艺术无法赋予其封闭的自我和僵化的心灵以活力。第三章探讨勃朗宁诗中艺术与人生之间的积极互动。三首诗中的人物对艺术的理解建立在对人生的理解之上，与艺术品的交流又反之为其心灵发展注入强大的超越性力量，因此他们表现出无穷的创造力，这得益于艺术与人生的联结。结论部分认为，勃朗宁的艺术诗歌深刻表现了艺术与人生的关系，体现了他作为诗人、艺术家、道德家、人文主义者的多重关切。

The Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812-1889), whose dramatic poems include many about Renaissance art, has been called an “art poet” by critics. These poems tend to express the poet’s concern about the relation between art and life through the character’s attitude to the artwork or the relationship with it. Browning has recognized man’s finitude and thus proposed an essential moral principle of life, namely acting consistently to get rid of one’s finitude to approach the infinite and liberate the soul. Based on valuing the imperfection of man, art possesses the transcending power of perfecting the soul. For perfection denotes stillness and dead inhuman power, and the soul can only develop itself in the imperfect state. Renaissance art shows the inherent finitude of the imperfect man who lives in this world. It is in the revelation of man’s imperfection that art highlights man’s subjectivity and manifests man’s inner divinity. By expressing man’s finitude, art evokes an aspiration for being perfect and thus mediates between imperfect life and the infinite of the soul.

The poems discussed in this thesis are mainly Browning’s dramatic monologue poems related to art. By analyzing the way and attitude of the character in the poem towards the artwork, it is revealed that art has the transcendental power to break the limitations of life and leads man’s soul to approach the infinite. Chapter One aims to seek theoretical and realistic evidence for Browning’s view of art and life. In terms of the Victorian debate about art, whether Ruskin and Morris’s “labor theory” of art or the slogan “art for art’s sake” in the aestheticism movement, both reflect the humanistic spirit that art is inevitably man-oriented. Though not publicly expressing his view, Browning had already responded to it in his poems and letters, believing that there is an intrinsic relation between art and life. Chapter Two reveals Browning’s criticism of the divorce between art and life by discussing three poems in which the characters view art as a perfect form and thus separate it from their life. As a result, they do not have real communication with the artwork, so art fails to vitalize their isolated self and stagnant soul. Chapter Three displays the active interaction between art and life by discussing three poems in which the characters demonstrate consistency in understanding art and understanding life. The communication with artwork, in turn, endows powerful transcendental energy with the development of their soul, so they demonstrate infinite creativity, which benefits from the union between art and life. This thesis concludes that Browning’s art poems reveal the relation between art and life profoundly, contributing to his deep concern as a poet, an artist, a moralist, and a humanist.