The Anger of Achilles: A Prize-Winning ‘Epic for Radio’ by Robert Graves

Wrigley, A. (2015). The Anger of Achilles: A Prize-Winning ‘Epic for Radio’ by Robert Graves. In: Gibson, A. G. G. ed. Robert Graves and the Classical Tradition. Oxford University Press, pp. 314–331.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198738053.003.0017

Abstract

This chapter explores the varied scholarly, critical, and public engagements with The Anger of Achilles, Robert Graves’s adaptation of Homer’s Iliad. It was a huge commercial success in book form, often reprinted following its first publication in 1959. In the 1960s Graves vigorously pursued stage and film performances of the text, but while these plans continually faltered, it was in repeated performances on BBC Radio’s Home Service and Third Programme that The Anger of Achilles reached its largest audiences and attained its greatest critical success, with the award in 1965 of the Prix Italia for an outstanding literary and dramatic work for radio. This study emphasizes the fact that Graves’ creative adaptations of antiquity held enormous popular appeal, not only for readers but also for hundreds of thousands of listeners who may not, in the main, have been schooled in Classics.