本文從Lionel Trilling的「佛洛斯特是一位恐怖的詩人」出發，探討「孤獨」與「崇高」兩大元素於羅伯特．佛洛斯特詩歌中的關係。本論文一有三章。其第一章「緒論」將介紹孤獨和崇高兩大概念的定義、背景、與詩學乃至與佛洛斯特自身的關係，並援以兩位浪漫主義詩人威廉．華茲華斯（William Wordsworth）和約翰．濟慈（John Keats）的詩作佐證。有鑑於部分佛洛斯特的作品中仍有它者意識存在，因此我將「避世」這個理念定性並用以區分其他只有單一意識存在的「孤獨」詩歌。最後以康德的「恐懼」和「不和諧」兩大孤獨與崇高的聯繫結束緒論，並留下一些尚待第二章和第三章才能解答的問題。
第二章「孤獨」和第三章「避世」分別包含了我對三首詩的解讀。他們分別是作為佛洛斯特詩歌原點的「進入自我（Into My Own）」、即便對崇高也維持個人主義的「致解凍的風（To the Thawing Wind）」和描繪外在宏偉打入內心，形成崇高的「荒蕪之地（Desert Places）」。
第三章「避世」也同樣包含我對三首詩的解讀。分別為「興高采烈能彌補其轉瞬即逝（Happiness Makes up in Height for What it Lacks in Length）」、「在谷中（In a Vale）」和「無垠時刻（A Boundless Moment）」。「興高采烈能彌補其轉瞬即逝」告訴我們為何佛洛斯特會選擇拋開世俗、「身在谷中」和「無垠時刻」則兩相映照，前者讓我們見證了詩人自身追求「崇高」的神祕經驗和對讀者們的循循善誘，而後者則透過「自我欺瞞」來反襯獨立性是何等重要，以及詩人可能的自喻。本論文的最後是『總結』，透過佛洛斯特的這六篇詩歌總結他和在英美詩歌史上的地位。

The road for this thesis was paved by a single comment of Lionel Trilling’s in a speech given in honor of his friend on the occasion of his 85th birthday: “I think of Robert Frost as a terrifying poet” (Trilling 378). Trilling was apparently offering a humorous and seriously summation of Frost’s poetry. This “terrifying” theme has been advanced, more recently, by Chard deNiord, the Laureate of Vermont (a medal that was awarded to Robert Frost in 1961), in his essay “Suspense, Suspension, and the Sublime in the Poetry of Robert Frost,” where he defines Frost as “a sublime poet who struck terror in both himself and his readers” (DeNiord). And I believe that such terror, which Frost wanted to strike in readers, is enhanced by solitude.
To figure out the aesthetic relationship between Robert Frost, the sublime, and solitude, I dive into their definition and literary histories. In the literature review and methodology sections of Chapter 1: Background, I observe two bridges between solitude and the sublime. The first one is “terror,” originating from Edmund Burke’s and Immanuel Kant’s theories. According to the latter’s theory, the sublime can originate from deep solitude (Kant 25). The second bridge, “discordance,” derives from the romantic metaphysical sublime and Francis Ferguson’s view that the action of retreat, as a form of disobedience to society’s induction, is a source of the sublime (Ferguson 32). In this account, the self-attunement arising from the reunion with nature’s beauty can be another source of the sublime besides its terror. Wordsworth’s poems, such as “Tintern Abbey,” “Daffodil,” and “Intimations of Immortality” are offered as pre-Frostian precursors of the interaction of solitude and the sublime. As Jay Parini puts it: “Frost’s aesthetic was largely derived from the Romantics” (Parini 139)—and the same point can be made about his poetic way of relating solitude and the sublime to one another.
Building part of my analysis on Parini’s view that Frost’s poem is at times “interrupted by an intruder” (Parini 120), I investigate Frost’s use of open-ended deixis, which implements what I call a “social engagement” with solitude, diluting it, as Philip Koch has put it. More generally, I categorize Frost’s poems into two types—those without social engagement are the solitude poems – “Into My Own,” “To the Thawing Wind,” and “Desert Places” of Chapter 2. The first poem is praised by Parini as Frost’s poetic archetype, the second poem reveals Frost’s individualism toward grandeur, and the third shows us how grandeur forms the sublime. The use of suspension in these solitary poems has enhanced the terror bridge of the sublime. The “open-ended deixis,” as the presentation of “intruder”, is a variation of solitude’s effect on the sublime. Those poems with open-ended deixis are “seclusion poems” of Chapter 3— “Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length,” “In A Vale,” and “A Boundless Moment.” The first poem gives us Frost’s reasons for being secluded alongside a companion as self-proving. The second poem marks Frost’s attitude to seeking the sublime and his guidance to companions; while the third one shows us the importance of individuality when seeking the sublime. Taken together, these three poems reflect the brake effect of “the other” in Frost’s poems, representing Frost’s social responsibility and weakening the ultimate solitude sublime. This thesis ends with a “Conclusion,” which reprises my main findings about solitude and the sublime in Robert Frost’s poetry, especially his more practical and scientific views of nature that propels him to pursue the older Burkean sublime when in solitude. It also reestablishes Frost’s place in Anglophone poetic cultural history by comparing his approach to the sublime to that of Wordsworth.

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