114 年 國立清華大學中國文學系碩士班甲組《英文》

一、文章摘要（15%）：請仔細閱讀以下文章，根據其內容以中文撰寫摘要，字數約 150-200 個字。

Modern Chinese Literature

Back in the mid-1930s, when Edgar Snow was gathering material for his Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories (1937), he had to allow that "even if contemporary China has produced no great literature, there must be much of scientific and sociological interest, and for utilitarian purposes alone it ought to be made available to us."

If Snow were to do the selections today, he would not need to make any such allowances, for the kind of fiction and, for that matter, poetry that has emerged from China since the early 1980s needs no apologies. The new generation of writers, though no less concerned about the salvation of the country than their predecessors, have identified their own genius by severing ties with the critical-realist mode so fashionable during the 1920s and 1930s. The Chinese writers of the post-Mao era have entered a brave new world of narrative possibilities that enables them to circumvent political taboos and illuminate the realities of China through forms and techniques as diverse as parable, farce, modernism, avant-gardism, and, more recently, magical realism.

Modern Chinese literature is very much a barometer of the social, political, and historical conditions of its times. China's defeat in the Opium War (1839-1842) has generally been regarded by historians as the beginning of the end of imperial China. For the Chinese, who thought of their nation as the Middle Kingdom, the humiliation of being vanquished by British gunboats turned out to be more than a shattering experience. They began to realize, perhaps for the first time in their history, that their country was backward not only in science and technology but in social and political institutions as well. Confucianism, insofar as it was identified as China's state religion, coterminous with the concepts of altruism, compassion, and benevolence, was bankrupt precisely because it was perceived to be the very source of backwardness and resistance to change.

(......) It is generally agreed that modern Chinese literature begins with Lu Xun. Appropriately, he called his first collection of stories, written between 1918 and 1923, Call to Arms. Burning with a zeal to expose the evils of feudal society, Lu Xun introduced an iconoclastic fervor that came to characterize the defiant spirit of May Fourth writers in "a nation afflicted with a spiritual disease and therefore unable to strengthen itself or change its set way of inhumanity," in the words of C. T. Hsia.

Smarting from the fiasco of the failed Boxer Uprising (1900), leading Chinese intellectuals of the May Fourth era were more convinced of the superior nature of Western civilization than were their late-Qing counterparts. They believed that China stood no chance of rejuvenation unless its hopelessly archaic political systems and social institutions were completely overhauled. Indeed, confidence in the health of traditional Chinese culture had sunk so low that drastic calls for Westernization, such as the Latinization of the Chinese language, were made issues of the day.

In the writings of the May Fourth period, modern China is modern only because it is coeval with the modern world, for it is still plagued by the bugbears of poverty, ignorance, lethargy, cowardice, selfishness, hypocrisy, cruelty, superstition, and corruption. By looking China's problems squarely in the eye, May Fourth writers defined the character of modern Chinese writing by their engaged spirit and an openness to trenchant self-criticism.

Not all Republican-era writers, to be sure, were interested in addressing the immediate concerns of the day – to the benefit of thematic diversity. Such diversity can be seen by comparing the respective thematic concerns of representative writers. For example, in the first period we have in Wen Yiduo a poet so despairing of China's stagnation that he likens it to "Dead Water" (1926). Dai Wangshu's stirring poem "Written on a Prison Wall" (1942) evokes the patriotic sentiments of his ancient predecessor Qu Yuan (340?-278 B.C.). In contrast, Xu Zhimo's love protestations and Li Jinfa's enigmatic ruminations strike us as otherworldly for their self-regarding propensities.

A similar variety of themes can be found in early fiction. While most of the May Fourth writers after Lu Xun tie feudalism to cannibalism and devote themselves one way or another to the cause of national salvation, Xu Dishan, as is evident in "The Merchant's Wife" (1921), appears to be more concerned with the salvation of the heroine's soul than with the glaring inequities that reduce her to her present misery. Shen Congwen, on the other hand, tests the possibilities of happiness for the woman after whom the story "Xiaoxiao" (1929) is named. She is situated in a patriarchal society governed by the rules of expediency and the impulse of charity, a natural order free from established moral dogmas and assumptions.

Writers of the first period are relatively free to indulge in personal interpretations of reality. Since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, however, writers have been denied the luxury of such individualist expression. Their perception of reality must conform to prescriptions laid down by Mao Zedong in his "Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" in 1942. People are divided into separate classes as antagonistic groups in society, according to Mao, and there will be no genuine love of humanity until classes are eliminated all over the world. Mao made it imperative that literature function in the service of politics.

二、翻譯（15%）：請將以下的英文短文翻譯為現代白話中文。

Preface to The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature

The primary purpose of this anthology is to provide a broad selection of expertly translated texts from the widest possible variety of sources while staying within the limits of a portable one volume text. My aim throughout has been to give a sense of the full range of Chinese literature. The editorial principles I have employed do not restrict literature to belles-lettres in the narrowest sense. For the purposes of this anthology, literature is construed very broadly as vivid or imaginative writing. Literature may be driven by a lyrical impulse or generated by a narrative intent; it may even be chiefly descriptive or expository. A text may be concerned with any subject matter or be written in virtually any genre or form; so long as it has esthetic merit or genuine emotional appeal (apart from its original purpose), it is capable of being considered literature. This anthology demonstrates that many different types of written texts might be regarded as literature.

The conception of "Chinese literature" has up until now been rather narrow and prescriptive; the canon needs to be enlarged. To a certain extent, then, this is meant to be an iconoclastic anthology. As we free ourselves from the customary constraints imposed by the concept of "classical," we discover an enormous number of interesting texts available for consideration. Throughout history, the tradition was constantly being reshaped in response to a host of literary and nonliterary factors, and, in retrospective fashion, will go on being remade in response to similar factors. Chinese literature, like Chinese culture as a whole, is not a seamless, monotonous fabric. Anthologists and literary historians who emphasize only standard genres and elite writers are responsible for perpetuating a false image of what Chinese literature might be for our own age.

It is sometimes thought, for instance, that Chinese literature is almost exclusively puritanical, but China has a long tradition of pornographic literature as explicit as any in the world. I have decided not to include the most egregious types of pornography but have chosen a few examples that display unusual irony or wit. With the pornography as with all other types of literature included here, I have not bowdlerized or prettified.

1. What is the primary purpose of Jo-shui Chen's study of Liu Zongyuan?
   (A) To provide a comprehensive biography of Liu Zongyuan
   (B) To analyze Liu Zongyuan's contributions to Buddhist philosophy
   (C) To understand the nature of the Tang "Confucian revival"
   (D) To critique the existing scholarship on Liu Zongyuan

2. According to the passage, how does Chen distinguish Liu Zongyuan from other figures of the "Confucian revival" like Han Yu and Li Ao?
   (A) Liu Zongyuan was more radical in his rejection of Buddhism and Taoism.
   (B) Liu Zongyuan placed greater emphasis on self-cultivation and personal morality.
   (C) Liu Zongyuan's Confucianism was more concerned with government and social order.
   (D) Liu Zongyuan was more influential in shaping the intellectual culture of the Song dynasty.

3. Which of the following is NOT one of the methodological implications of Chen's thesis, as discussed in the passage?
   (A) Recognizing the importance of non-philosophical activities like literature and ritual in intellectual history.
   (B) Understanding that "Confucianism" is a dynamic and historically contingent concept.
   (C) Emphasizing the importance of individual figures in shaping intellectual traditions.
   (D) Acknowledging the diversity and complexity of intellectual culture within elite groups.

4. What is the author's overall assessment of Chen's study?
   (A) It is a comprehensive and groundbreaking work that significantly advances our understanding of Liu Zongyuan.
   (B) It is a valuable contribution but suffers from a lack of in-depth analysis and a reluctance to pursue new interpretations.
   (C) It is a flawed work that misrepresents Liu Zongyuan's thought and overemphasizes his role in the "Confucian revival."
   (D) It is a significant work that has had a profound impact on the study of Chinese intellectual history.