| This dissertation suggests that the text of the Annunciation is infused with possibility: Mary, filled with grace, is beckoned by the divine into possibility; responding in grace, she in turn beckons the divine into possibility. Transgressing the limits of language, this possibility slips into apophasis---into a moment of Gelassenheit, a mutual "letting-be" or releasement of Mary and the divine into a mystical union of love. The work of unfolding the possibilities present in the Annunciation is facilitated through a hermeneutical phenomenology that explores this text as a theopoetic reflection. This dissertation begins with a discussion of the foundational phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and then moves to the more recent work of several French phenomenologists, including Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Michel Henry. The interpretation of the Annunciation is then expanded through the philosophical work of Luce Irigaray, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida. Finally, the phenomenologies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger provide a means to discuss the text of the Annunciation as theopoesis. Through this phenomenological framing, this dissertation interprets the Annunciation as a theopoetic text describing a moment of Gelassenheit which springs from a mutual gift of love between the divine and the human, and which becomes manifest through a gift of life. |
