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The Iliad: The Male Totem
Hardcover
Literary CriticismPoetry CriticismGeneral Gender Studies
Publisher Price: $38.95
Publisher: Indy
Published: Jul 20 2026
Pages: 152
Weight: 0.98
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Iliad: The Male Totem presents a bold and unconventional interpretation of Homer's epic, examining the symbolic structures beneath its world of warfare, honor, rivalry, sacrifice, and death
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Michael M. Nikoletseas approaches the Iliad as a poetical rendition of male phyletic fantasies-a vast expression of the ancient male unconscious. Drawing together classical interpretation, anthropology, psychology, and the study of myth, he explores the warrior's identification with the animal image, the male body, aggression, authority, kinship, mortality, and the pursuit of glory.
Achilles, Hector, and the warriors of the Achaean world emerge within a deeper archaic order in which identity is forged through ritual, violence, sacred symbolism, and the judgment of other men. From this perspective, the Iliad is not merely a heroic narrative but also a record of the forces that shaped early masculine consciousness.
The Iliad is about 'klea andron', the glorious and terrible deeds of men in relation to other men, the raw content of the soul of man, but not of woman. It is a vast lagoon of dream fragments of the male unconscious, haunted with eternal shadows that compete, strut, fight, kill and rape, and above all seek the approval of other men.
Independent, provocative, and deeply personal, The Iliad: The Male Totem invites readers to reconsider one of the foundational works of Western literature. This revised and corrected edition offers an improved presentation of Nikoletseas's distinctive study for readers interested in Homer, classical literature, Greek mythology, anthropology, depth psychology, masculinity, and comparative mythology.
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