The Solomonic Fantasy

This study takes on a historical-critical approach to the analysis of the Solomonic narrative (1 Kings 1:1-12:24) within the larger Deuteronomistic (Hi)Story (DH) by employing a postcolonial-psychoanalytic reading strategy. Sonia Wong argues that the DH is a cumulative, composite text which originated in the late fourth-century-BCE Persian Yehud. Through a Freudian model of fantasy as a disguised fulfillment for a repressed wish, Wong argues that the Solomonic Kingdom is a cultural fantasy that reflects the imperialized Yehudites' ambivalent wish to take the dominant, privileged position of the Persian imperializer through a pacifist mode of domination and to critique the imperializer's oppressive traits. The study provides a detailed textual analysis of the fantasy-thoughts, traces the fantasy-sources to the Persian context, and describes the psychic mechanisms involved in the fantasy-work.Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Prolegomena to a Postcolonial-Psychoanalytic Approach to the Deuteronomistic (Hi)Story
Chapter 3: A Proposed Model of Postcolonial-Psychoanalytic Criticism
Chapter 4: Wishes and Desires on the Manifest Surface
Chapter 5: Semanalysis: Dynamic of Drive in and out of the Solomonic Kingdom
Chapter 6: Pharaoh as a Composite Character
Chapter 7: Hiram as a Composite Character
Chapter 8: The Queen of Sheba as a Composite Character
Chapter 9: The Solomonic Kingdom as a Spector of Persian Empire
Chapter 10: Conclusion