Student Question

What are the form, image, simile, metaphor, subject matter, and theme in 'Fra Lippo-Lippi'?

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"Fra Lippo Lippi" by Robert Browning is a dramatic monologue in blank verse featuring the monk and painter Fra Lippo Lippi. The poem explores themes of art, religion, and sensuality, portraying the monk's defense of his worldly indulgences as compatible with his monastic vows. Browning uses metaphors and imagery to depict the tension between spiritual and earthly pursuits, presenting the world as a divine text to be interpreted alongside religious scripture.

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Robert Browning’s Fra Lippo Lippi is a dramatic monologue written in blank verse, based on Vasari’s Lives, in which the speaker is a famous painter who is also a monk. He has slipped out of a window of his monastery to head into town and carouse. The monk’s defense of his own activities is based on the notion of the “two books”, the Liber (Bible) and Liber Mundi (book of the world). Following Augustine and some of the later scholastics, he makes the point that the Liber Mundi, the world, is God’s creation, and like God’s other book can be read and interpreted as a text. Thus Fra Lippo Lippi’s quest for sensual pleasure and appreciation of the world is not opposed to but in fulfillment of his monastic vows. Thus his superficial rejection of the monastic life imposed upon him, masks a deep and genuine vocation, conforming to the spirit if not the letter of monastic piety. Unlike most of Browning’s narrators, this is one to whom Browning is fundamentally sympathetic.

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