The Blues of Achilles

October 20, 2021, DeTamble Auditorium

The Wake Forest University Classics Department brings musician and Classics B.A. Joe Goodkin to campus to perform his adaptation of Homer’s Iliad. Joe’s first-person songs capture the horror, grief, and love that permeate the Iliad and the combat experience. Sung from the perspective of Achilles, Priam, Patroclus, Briseis, Helen, Andromache, and more, The Blues of Achilles evokes “the truths that the Iliad conveys [through] songs that [are] real and now” in the words of Tom Palaima, Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin.

This event brings together classical literature, modern folk music, and enduring questions about war, trauma, love, and grief.

Collaborators: WFU Department of Classics, WFU Department of Music