113 年 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班文學組《文學作品分析》

Part I. (50%) Write a short essay in English explaining the continuities and discontinuities that the following four poems show with the literary tradition(s) to which they belong. Be sure to name the tradition(s) specifically and explain the relevant literary history.

(1)
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs, no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies, I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist, with moonlight so.
Like him who day by day unto his draught
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

(2)
Epithalamion of a Peach
She was round, full, ripe, a maid immaculate,
Saving her cheeks. Now Paul the bridegroom
Acclaims his treasure, his hand has led her home;
Nor did he pull her gently through the gate
As would a lover more dainty and delicate:
The two-and-thirty cut-throats doing his will
Tore off her robes and stripped her down until

vocabulary
epithalamion: a poem celebrating a marriage

(3)
A strife is grown between Virtue and Love,
While each pretends that Stella must be his:
Her eyes, her lips, her all, saith Love, do this
Since they do wear his badge, most firmly prove.
But Virtue thus that title doth disprove:
That Stella (oh dear name) that Stella is
That virtuous soul, sure heir of heav'nly bliss,
Not this fair outside, which our hearts doth move;
And therefore, though her beauty and her grace
Be Love's indeed, in Stella's self he may
By no pretense claim any manner place.
Well, Love, since this demur our suit will stay,
Let Virtue have that Stella's self; yet thus
That Virtue but that body grant to us.

—Sir Philip Sidney

(4)
One master, aged, as I am, thirty-two,
all summer sonneted adulterous
love: cocktails and woods, fortuitous
meetings, public words that no one knew
were private. This playground is an odd land-
scape for longings in an afternoon
splashed with babies' bright clothes. Near six now. Soon,
grown tired of high adventure in the sand-
pit, we will head for home and food.
We—you and I—don't have a thing to hide.
Yet there's no common space for meeting in,
and secrets fence me in on every side.
This week is taking longer than it should.

—Marilyn Hacker

Part II. (50%) What are the main themes of the following story? Write a short essay in English explaining your interpretation of the story; use examples from the story to support your interpretation.

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby's almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting the dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn't
have it. But now the baby wants the dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my
wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl,
"Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy's girl?" The baby says, "Momma," and she doesn't just say it once,
she says it repeatedly, "Momma momma momma." I don't see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for
that damn baby.
The kind of dog the baby wants, my wife says, is a Cairn terrier. This kind of dog, my wife says, is a
Presbyterian like herself and the baby. Last year the baby was a Baptist—that is, she went to the Mother's
Day Out program at the First Baptist twice a week. This year she is a Presbyterian because the
Presbyterians have better swings and slides and things. I think that's pretty shameless and I have said so.
My wife is a legitimate lifelong Presbyterian and says that makes it O.K.; way back when she was a child
she used to go to the First Presbyterian in Evansville, Illinois. I didn't go to church because I was a black
sheep. There were five children in my family, and the males rotated the position of black sheep among us,
the oldest one being the black sheep for a while while he was in his DWI period or whatever and then
getting grayer as he maybe got a job or was in the service and then finally becoming a white sheep when he
got married and had a grandchild. My sister was never a black sheep because she was a girl.
Our baby is a pretty fine baby. I told my wife for many ears that she couldn't have a baby because it
was too expensive. But they wear you down. They are just wonderful at wearing you down, even if it takes
years, as it did in this case. Now I hang around the baby every chance I get. Her name is Joanna. She wears
Oshkosh overalls and says "no," "bottle," "out," and "Momma." She looks most lovable when she's wet.
This dog thing is getting to be a big issue. I said to my wife, "Well, you've got the baby, do we have to
have the damned dog, too?" The dog will probably bite somebody, or get lost. I can see myself walking all
over our subdivision asking people, "Have you seen this brown dog?" "What's it's name?" they'll say to
me, and I'll stare at them coldly and say, "Michael.” That's what she wants to call it, Michael. That's a silly
name for a dog and I'll have to go looking for this possibly rabid animal and say to people, "Have you seen
this brown dog? Michael?" It's enough to make you think about divorce.
What's the baby going to do with that dog that it can't do with me? Romp? I can romp. I took her to
the playground at the school. It was a Sunday and there was nobody there, and we romped. I ran, and she
tottered after me at a good pace. I held her as she slid down the slide. She groped her way through a length
of big pipe they have there set in concrete. She picked up a feather and looked at it for a long time. I was
worried that it might be a diseased feather but she didn't put it in her mouth. Then we ran some more over
the parched bare softball field and through the arcade that connects the temporary wooden classrooms,
which are losing their yellow paint, to the main building. Joanna will go to this school some day, if I stay in
the same job.
I looked at some dogs in Pets-A-Plenty, which has birds, rodents, reptiles, and dogs, all in top
condition. They showed me the Cairn terriers. "Do they have their prayer books?" I asked. This woman
clerk didn't know what I was talking about. The Cairn terriers ran about two ninety-five per, with their
papers. I started to ask if they had any illegitimate children at lower prices but I could see that it would be
useless and the woman already didn't like me, I could tell.
What is wrong with me? Why am I not a more natural person, like my wife wants me to be? I sit up, in
the early morning, at my desk on the second floor of our house. The desk faces the street. At five-thirty in
the morning, the runners are already out, individually or in pairs, running toward rude red health. I'm
sipping Gallo Chablis with an ice cube in it, smoking, worrying. I worry that the baby may jam a kitchen
knife in an electrical outlet while she's wet. I've put those little plastic plugs into all the electrical outlets
but she's learned how to pop them out. I've checked the Crayolas. They've made the Crayolas safe to eat—
I called the head office in Pennsylvania. She can eat a whole box of Crayolas and nothing will happen to
her. If I don't get the new tires for the car I can buy the dog.
I remember the time, thirty years ago, when I put Herman's mother's Buick into a cornfield, on the
Beaumont highway. There was another car in my lane, and I didn't hit it, and it didn't hit me. I remember
veering to the right and down into the ditch and up through the fence and coming to rest in the cornfield
and then getting out to wake Herman and the two of us going to see what the happy drunks in the other car
had come to, in the ditch on the other side of the road. That was when I was a black sheep, years and years
ago. That was skillfully done, I think. I get up, congratulate myself in memory, and go in to look at the
baby.

—Donald Barthelme

vocabulary
Chablis: a type of white wine
Presbyterian | Baptist: two types of Christianity
DWI: Driving While Intoxicated or Driving While Impaired
Oshkosh: a brand of children's clothes
Gallo: an American brand of wine
Crayolas: a brand of crayon