'Now thou art an O without a figure': A Feminine Hermeneutics of Absence and the Early Modern Theatre

我的博士研究将通过一种解释学的方法来探讨悲伤，考虑如何将悲伤理解为一种沉默（不可言说）的话语。与传统的悲伤心理模型相反，这个项目将展示通过文学媒介定性地理解悲伤的必要性，而且将重点放在作为体验的写作上。通过这种方式，损失将被理解为既通向语言又远离语言，而哀悼将被假定为一种蜕变的过程，它（去）构建（非）自我。与强调恢复的线性模型相比，重点将放在通过周期性哀悼来解决悲伤的（不）可解性上。为了扩展上述研究问题，本博士将分析当代背景下的存在主义悲伤，并旨在将悲伤理解为一种从存在的虚无中产生的不可言说的话语。这将通过结合哲学、宗教、文学和解释学的四方跨学科方法来执行。它将探讨悲伤和遗忘之间的关系，重点是写作作为一个（去）生成的过程，反复哀悼。第一章将概述我们当前欧洲背景下的生存困境，哀叹上帝缺席的现实的不稳定性，这已经通过后结构主义运动的西方话语的破裂而暴露出来。本章将讨论一些关键的存在主义和后现代主义人物，如索伦·克尔凯郭尔、弗里德里希·尼采、让-保罗·萨特和雅克·德里达，概述当前后现代存在主义的身份危机，并展示其与悲伤的关系。第二章将把存在主义的悲伤发展为一种冷漠的（不可沟通的）话语，并将主要借鉴威廉·弗兰克和迈克尔·塞尔，通过C.S.刘易斯和莎士比亚悲剧的文学作品来展示其目的。第三章随后将转向现象学，从动态否定的身份（去）建构角度论证写作是一种哀悼的经验过程。这将通过h<s:1> <s:1>·希克斯、马丁·海德格尔、凯瑟琳·凯勒的作品和艾米莉·狄金森的诗歌来探索。最后，第四章将探讨Derridean的概念，即名义上的适当作为与死者（非）关系的冷漠，将死亡理解为绝对的损失-所有悲伤和偶然哀悼的起点和终点。该项目的最初贡献在于其对悲伤的高度跨学科研究，该研究更强调通过社会科学和自然科学进行定量研究。因此，它将在不遵循临床或康复途径的人文学科中提供对悲伤/哀悼的新理解。此外，它还将通过将两种话语融合在悲伤的节点研究中，为当代幻影学和神学的新兴学术做出贡献，而且还将在直接意识中复兴存在主义思想。围绕哀悼和身份的问题在我们这个时代尤其相关，这个时代还没有一种语言来定义自己，因此引发了围绕文化和自我认同的悲伤和不确定性。

My doctoral research will explore grief through a hermeneutical approach in considering how grief may be understood as an apophatic (unsayable) discourse. Contra traditional psychological models of grief, this project will demonstrate the need to understand grief qualitatively through the medium of literature, and moreover will focus on writing as experiential. In this way, loss will be understood as leading both to and away from language, and mourning will be posited as a process of metamorphosis which (de)constructs (non)selfhood. Emphasis will thus be given to the (un)solvability of grief through cyclical mourning, contrasting with linear models emphasizing recovery.To expand on the research question above, this PhD will analyze existential grief in a contemporary context and aim to understand grief as an unsayable discourse emanating from the no-thingness of existence. This will be executed through a quadripartite interdisciplinary methodology combining philosophy, religion, literature and hermeneutics. It will explore the relationship between grief and apophasis, focusing on writing as a (de)generative process of recurrent mourning. The first chapter will outline the existential plight in our current European context, lamenting the instability of reality in the absence of God, which has been exposed by the fracturing of Western discourse through poststructuralist movements. This chapter will engage with key existential and postmodern figures such as Soren Kierkegaard, Fredrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida, outlining the present post postmodern existential crisis of identity and demonstrate its relationship to grief. The second chapter will then develop existential grief as an apophatic (incommunicable) discourse, and will primarily draw upon William Franke and Michael Sells, demonstrating its aim through the literature of C.S. Lewis and Shakespearean Tragedy. Chapter Three will subsequently take a phenomenological turn, demonstrating writing as an experiential process of mourning in terms of identity (de)construction via kinetic negation. This will be explored through the works of Hélène Cixous, Martin Heidegger, Catherine Keller and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Finally, Chapter Four will explore Derridean notions of the nominal proper as apophatic in (non)relation to the deceased, understanding death as Absolute Loss-the beginning and end point of all grief and contingent mourning.The original contribution of this project is its highly interdisciplinary study of grief, which has had more emphasis in quantitative research through the social and natural sciences. It will therefore provide a new understanding of grief/mourning in the humanities that does not follow clinical or recovery pathways. Furthermore, it will also contribute to newly emerging scholarship on contemporary apophatics and theopoetics by merging both discourses in the nodal study of grief, and will moreover revive existential thought within immediate consciousness. Questions surrounding mourning and identity are especially pertinent in our present era, which does not yet have a language to define itself, thereby eliciting grief and uncertainty surrounding cultural and self-identification.