國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所： 英語學系
科目：英美文學史
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
Part One English Literature
共 3 頁，第 1 頁
(60%)
I. Succinctly identify the following titles or terms.
1. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
2. The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux
3. To His Coy Mistress
(15%)
4. The Subjection of Women
5. “Sweetness and Light”
II. Answer Three of the question.
(45%)
1. Define and illustrate with one example one of the terms: (a)the sonnet sequence, (b) medieval romance,
(c) metadrama, (d) the theatre of the absurd.
2. Compare the Neoclassical and the Romantic period in terms of the poetic aesthetics, that is, the concept
of diction, subject matter, the poet, the poet’s relation to poetry, and the function of poetry. Substantiate
your discussion with concrete examples composed in these two periods.
3. Discuss the use of the motif of journey in two prose fictions written in two different periods.
4. Discuss T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land or one of Virginia Woolf’s novels to illustrate the spirit and the
aesthetics of modernism.
Part Two. American Literature (40%)
I. Identification (Write the authors and the titles of the following passages) (10%)
1. He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s
even something—sub human—something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something—ape
like about him, like one of those pictures I’ve seen in—anthropological studies! Thousands and
thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is . . . survivor of the stone age!
2. This prison was therefore the oldest building in the town. Perhaps, like all that relates to crime, it had
never looked new and fresh. . . . But on one side of the door there was a wild rose bush covered, in
this month of June, with flowers. The roses seemed to offer their delicate beauty to the prisoner, as he
went in and came out, as though the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
3. The boat was headed for the beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall
wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant, standing with its back to
the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the
-1-
國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所： 英語學系
科目：英美文學史
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
共 3 頁，第 2 頁
struggles of the individual—nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem
cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise, But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent.
4. Without a penny to his name, three great universities are begging for him, and from there the sky’s the
limit, because it’s not what you do, Ben. It’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts,
Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and
that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of
being liked!
5. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters!
does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid
hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these
dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned.
Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:--the finger it was meant for, perhaps,
moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity . . .
II. Short answers (10%)
1. From the beginning, Americans identified with Rip as a counterhero, and an anti-Franklinian who
made a success of failure, and successive generations have responded profoundly to his pervasive
theme of mutability, especially as localized in his portrayal of the bewildering and destructive rapidity
of change in American life.
To which writer does the passage refer?
2. But his basic critical principles were consistent enough. He thought poetry should appeal only to the
sense of beauty, not truth; informational poetry, poetry of ideas, or any sort of didactic poetry was
illegitimate. Holding that the true poetry emotion was a vague sensory state, he set himself against
realistic details in poetry.
To which critic and poet does the passage refer?
3. Her subject matter, like her form, seemed conventional under the rubrics devised after her death for
the first (1890) edition of her poems: Life, Love, Nature, Time, and Eternity, but often she brought
dazzling originality to the tritest topic. Her “nature” poems, for example, delight with sharp, precise
observations, but they are infused with mingled ecstasy and pain.
To which poet does the passage refer?
-2-
國立彰化師範大學九十四學年度碩士班招生考試試題
系所： 英語學系
科目：英美文學史
☆☆請在答案紙上作答☆☆
共 3 頁，第 3 頁
4. The comic talent shown in various New York episodes from V. was also evident in his novel, The
Crying of Lot 49 (1966). This short, perfectly controlled novel teases us and itself with questions
about the meaning of our American heritage, as embodied in the form of the mysterious legacy left to
its heroine, Oedipa Maas. . . . What is the connection between this legacy and the mysterious
alternative to the U.S. Postal System on which Oedipa believes she has stumbled?
To which writer does this passage refer?
5. The patient returned to Providence and obeyed these instructions for three months “and came to near
the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.” She drew back from the edge of madness by
resuming her life as a reluctant wife and mother and as an enthusiastic writer and participant in the
American Woman Suffrage Association . . . A few years later she wrote her most famous story. As she
concluded: “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and
it worked.”
To which writer does the passage refer?
III.
Essay questions (20%)
1. Discuss TWO of the following poets in terms of their themes, forms, and the significance of their
works . . . .etc.
E. A. Robinson
Amy Lowell
Allen Ginsberg
Wallace Stevens
William Carlo Williams
e.e.cummings
(10%)
2. Discuss TWO of the following works in terms of their themes, forms, and their significance in the
history of American literature . . . etc.
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”
The Woman Warrior
Sister Carrie
The Awakening
The Snows of Kilimanjaro As I Lay Dying (10%)
-3-