本篇碩士論文試圖論證馬修·路易士的小說《僧侶》(1796)中的崇高美學源於二元對立的失效，或者更確切地說，源於不可判斷性。儘管十八世紀晚期的志異小說通常被置於埃德蒙．伯克的崇高美學理論框架下進行解讀，該理論源於伯克的《崇高與美的哲學探索》（1757；增訂第二版，1759）以及安．拉德克利夫在其身後出版的〈論詩歌中的超自然〉（1826）一文中對恐怖與驚悚的區分，但是路易士的《僧侶》卻打破了這些批判傳統。我的論文探討了《僧侶》對伯克/拉德克利夫框架所發起的美學挑戰。透過運用雅克．德希達的解構理論進行文學分析，我將《僧侶》中的崇高美學重新詮釋為一個無限不可判斷的困境。
第一章耙梳了從羅馬時期的朗基努斯到後現代時期的李歐塔和德希達對於崇高美學史的貢獻與異同。李歐塔關注當下（此時此刻而非過去和未來）、事件（一次痛苦的遭遇，它證明了經驗和知識的雙重失敗）以及物質（原始材料或非物質性而非柏拉圖式的理型）。相較之下，德希達強調未來。他筆下的崇高美學更近似一種等待美學，即尚未到來的崇高。這是一種糾纏讀者且永遠無法準確下定論的現象。第二章旨在透過德希達對拉丁語「hostis」（指外國人，既可譯為客人，也可譯為敵人）十分玩味的解讀，來分析《僧侶》中阿格尼絲和流血修女之間的不可判斷。最後一章分析了瑪蒂達和聖母肖像之間的不可判斷。在這個例子中，不可判斷不僅源自於悅納異己的困境，也源自於本尊與其再現之間永遠無解的張力。

This MA thesis argues that the sublime in The Monk: A Romance (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis resides in the failure of dichotomies, or, more precisely, in the undecidable. While the late eighteenth-century Gothic fiction has often been framed within Edmund Burke’s aesthetic theory of the sublime in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful (1757; expanded second edition, 1759) and Ann Radcliffe’s distinction between terror and horror in her posthumous essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry” (1826), Lewis’s The Monk disrupts these critical traditions. My thesis examines the aesthetic challenges that The Monk poses to the Burkean/Radcliffean framework. By applying Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction to my literary analysis, I reinterpret the sublime in The Monk as an infinitely undecidable dilemma.
The first chapter traces the history of the sublime from Longinus to Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. Lyotard focuses on the present (the now rather than the past and the future), the occurrence (a painful encounter which testifies to the failure of both experience and knowledge), and the matter (raw material or immateriality rather than ideal form). In contrast, Derrida emphasizes the future by proposing the sublime to come, a haunting phenomenon that remains eternally undecidable. The second chapter aims to analyze the undecidable between Agnes and the Bleeding Nun in The Monk through Derrida’s provocative reading of hostis, a Latin word referring to a foreigner that can be translated as both guest and enemy. The last chapter analyzes the undecidable between Matilda and the portrait of Madona. In this example, the undecidable arises not only from the dilemma of hospitality but also from the unresolved tension between the original and its representation.

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