브라우닝의 시에 나타난 ‘소생’의 시학

Browning’s Poetics of Resuscitation in The Ring and the Book and “Saul”

This study aims at investigating Robert Browning’s poetics of ‘resuscitation’ in some of the representative dramatic monologues of The Ring and the Book and “Saul” in terms of Browning’s poetic theory proposed in his “Essay on Shelley.’ although it was never noticed by any Browning critics, it is highly interesting that Browning employs the grotesque figures of ‘galvanization’ or ‘resuscitation’ of the dead persons in this essay as dramatic reenactment of the past. This figure of resuscitation may serve as a key metaphor to understand Browning’s favorite use of the dramatic monologue from to in his successful attempt to synthesize the subjective poet and the objective poet of which distinction he expounds in the “Essay.” For example, the first book of The Ring and the Book utilizes this key trope of ‘resuscitation’ as the creative principle in the writing of Browning’s magnum opus. In this perspective, this essay closely examines the Books I and XII and the monologues of Pompilia, Canponsacchi and the Pope, with an emphasis on the figure of resurrection in both poetic, historical and spiritual senses. Moreover, the subsequent discussion of “Saul” from Men and Women shows how David gets transformed from a objective poet to a subjective poet through his attempt to cure Saul by the power of music and poem. The conclusion suggests that Browning’s poetics of resuscitation thematizes not only the productive process of his poetry but also the moral and spiritual transformation of the dramatic characters and the readers as well, opening the way to the advent of modernist poetics.