Robert Fagles

The Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center is proud to announce that the distinguished translator Robert Fagles has been selected as the 2007 recipient of its annual Award for Excellence in the Arts. Fagles’s translations of ancient literature have reintroduced the classics to a broad audience, beginning with the poet Bacchylides in 1961 and continuing with The Oresteia of Aeschylus (1975, 1984), Three Theban Plays by Sophocles (1984), Homer’s Iliad (1990) and Odyssey (1996). His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was published in 2006. Fagles’s literary versions of the Homeric epics, in a flexible six-beat poetic line, were widely praised for their ability to capture the quality of oral performances. His Iliad and Odyssey enjoyed popular as well as critical success. The Iliad won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets; The Odyssey, the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1997 he received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for lifetime achievement in translation. Fagles received his B.A. degree from Amherst, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale. He taught at Princeton University from 1960 to 2002 and remains a professor emeritus there. From 1975 to 94 he served as founding chair of the department of comparative literature.