New approaches to the Psalm 137

Three methods of academic literary criticism will be applied to this psalm: 1) structural analysis of the tale according to Propp and Greimas, illustrating the strong link between the initial and final sections and the particular position of the kernel of the story, outside the narrative structure of the text (v. 5 f.); 2) myth criticism: underlining the structures of the imagination, the theme of mourning and its figures, the myth of feminized cities, Zion and Babel; 3) Freudian textual analysis: deciphering of fantasms which express the primary impulses of the desire for the Mother, self-hatred (or self-punishment) and aggressivity directed at others, to the point of sadism.