本論文以班雅明探討德國巴洛克悲劇中有關神話、象徵、寓言、典型的理論來解讀《玻璃動物園》。在此種閱讀下，蘿拉最喜愛的玻璃獨角獸由具體的象徵（symbol）轉化為隱含的寓言（allegory），最後成為倫理的典型（emblem），揭露田納西‧威廉在此劇中的人道關懷。首先獨角獸象徵魏費爾德一家，特別是蘿拉與社會的疏離、過度的感性與想像力。在獨角獸被來訪的紳士（吉姆）摔破後，它原本的象徵性被寓言的意涵所取代，神話般的夢想世界變成了冰冷、寂寞、破碎的荒原。此時雅曼達和蘿拉需要的是班雅明所謂的「帶著憂鬱的注視」來流失生命原本的意義。在本劇結局，在有如「凍結的一刻」裡，破碎的玻璃動物雕像變成了一種典型，成為她們能洞察寓言意義的具體化身：她們不再追求生命的獨特性（獨角獸的原始意義），而能接受在平淡生活中「被碎片所圍繞」的「真實的馬」。在最終幕的「啞劇」裡兩位悲劇女主角（母親與女兒）有嶄新的體認：那就是人人皆需要相互了解、彼此同情（這也是威廉戲劇中共通的主旨）。因此，斷了角的獨角獸變成了班雅明式的典型：「在塵世中的靈光乍現」─在這個上帝已死、破碎的、墮落的現代世界中，凡俗的得道之路。

In this thesis The Glass Menagerie is read in the light of Walter Benjamin’s theory of myth, symbol, allegory and emblem in German Baroque “mourning plays.” In this reading Laura’s favorite glass unicorn changes from a symbol to an allegorical figure and finally to an emblem, thus revealing Tennessee Williams’s moral concerns in the play. At first a symbol of the alienation, hyper-sensitivity and imagination of the Wingfields, especially Laura, the unicorn is broken by the gentleman caller Jim. At this point it takes on an allegorical meaning, that of the transfiguration of its “original” mythic dream world into an icy, lonely, fragmentary wasteland, which demands what Benjamin would call the “melancholy gaze” of Amanda and Laura to drain away its life. In this “frozen moment” at the play’s end the broken glass figurine becomes an emblem, incarnating the heroines’ allegorical insight: they will no longer pursue uniqueness (the original sense of the unicorn) in life but will be content with the “surrounding ruins” (Benjamin) of ordinary life, with a “real horse.” In the play’s closing “mute scene” (Benjamin) with the two tragic heroines, mother and daughter, there is a new (“prophetic”) understanding of the need for universal compassion (a common Williams theme). The hornless unicorn then becomes a Benjaminian emblem as “profane illumination,” a secular solution in a fallen modern world, a world in ruins, devoid of transcendence or God.

Works Cited
Aristotle. “The Poetics.” Barranger 717-23.
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers.
The 1957 text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
Benjamin, Andrew. “Shoah, Remembrance and the Abeyance of
Fate: Walter Benjamin’s ‘Fate and Character.” The
Actuality of Walter Benjamin. Ed. Laura Marcus and
Lynda Nead. London: Lawrence & Wishart Limited, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter. “Fate and Character.” Selected Writings
Volume 1, 1913-1926. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W.
Jennings. Cambridge, Mass., London: Belknap, 1996.
---. Illuminations. Edited and with an introduction by
Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken
Books, 1968.
---. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John
Osborne. The 1963 text. London: Suhrkamp Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main, 1963 (1990[printing]).
Bigsby C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-
Century American Drama, Vol. II. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1984.
---. “Celebration of a Certain Courage.” Bloom, Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. 89–99.
---. “Entering The Glass Menagerie.” The Cambridge
Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C.
Roudané.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 29-44.
---. Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Tennessee Williams. New York: Chelsea
House, 1987.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
Culler, Jonathan. Barthes: A Very Short Introduction. New
York: Oxford University, 1983.
Debusscher, Gilbert. “Tennessee Williams's Unicorn Broken
Again.” Bloom, Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie 47-57.
Donahue, Francis. The Dramatic World of Tennessee Williams.
New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1964.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault:
Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The
Harvester Press, 1982.
Durham, Frank. “Tennessee Williams, Theatre Poet in
Prose.” Bloom, Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie 59-73.
Fambrough, Preston. “Williams’s The Glass Menagerie.”
Explicator (Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation,
Washington, DC) (63:2) Winter 2005, 100-102.
Falk, Signi. Tennessee Williams. Boston : Twayne
Publishers, 1978.
Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. LA, Ca.: Semiotext(e),
2001.
---. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction.
Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978.
Hunt, David. “The Association of the Lady and the Unicorn
and the Hunting Mythology of Caucasus.” Folklore 114
(2003)75-90.
Jackson, Esther Merle. “The Synthetic Myth.” Bloom,
Tennessee Williams. 23-42.
Kolin, Philip C. Ed. The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Maxwell, Gilbert. Tennessee Williams and Friends. Ohio: The
World Publishing Company, 1965.
Menninghaus, Winfried. “Walter Benjamin’s Theory of
Myth.” On Walter Benjamin—Critical Essays and
Recollections. Ed. Gary Smith. Mass: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1991.
Moriarty, Michael. Roland Barthes. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Ltd, 1991.
Parker, R. B. The Glass Menagerie: A Collection of Critical
Essays. NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983.
Pensky, Max. Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the
Play of Mourning. Massachusetts: The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1993.
Sheridan, Alan. Michel Foucault: the Will to Truth. London:
Tavistock Publications, 1980.
Stein, Roger B. “The Glass Menagerie Revisited:
Catastrophe without Violence.”Tennessee Williams—A
Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Stephen Stanton.
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977, 36-44.
Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. London: Faber and
Faber, 1961.
Tischler, Nancy. “The Glass Menagerie: The Revelation of a
Quiet Truth.” Bloom, Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie. 31–41.
Weber, Samuel. “Genealogy of Modernity: History, Myth and
Allegory in Benjamin's Origin of the German Mourning
Play.” MLN, 106, (1991): 465-500. 1991 by The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Williams, Tennessee. In the Winter of Cities. New York: New
Directions Paperbook, 1964.
---. “Forward to Camino Real.” Where I live: Selected
Essays. Ed. Christine R. Day and Bob Woods. New York:
New Directions, 1978. p.p.63-67.
---. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1975.
---. “Portrait of a Girl in Glass.” One Arm: and Other
Stories. New York: New Directions, 1948.
---. The Theatre of Tennessee Williams. 8 Vols. New York:
New Directions, 1971.
---. Where I live: Selected Essays. Ed. Christine R. Day
and Bob Woods. New York: New Directions, 1978.
Wolin, Richard. Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of
Redemption. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.