Autism and Classical Myth: How Roehampton's Adam Room might stimulate the autistic imagination

Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Wednesday 25 January 2017

How Roehampton's Adam Room might stimulate the autistic imagination

On Monday I said that I’d hopefully be posting again soon. Here - on Wednesday - is the posting I mentioned there on how I plan to use Hercules as a focus of the materials I am planning on autism and classical mythology.

As I have laid out briefly in earlier postings, including this one, I had been beginning to use the Perseus myth as my focus. In addition, I had started to think about the potential for owls – in light of the use of this creature as an image for autism. But, then, I managed to book a particular room at Roehampton for an upcoming event introducing the European Research Council-funded project my work is part for – for an event introducing the project to be held during ERC Week in March. This room, one of the eighteenth-century rooms at the University, is the Adam Room, which includes a chimneypiece panel representing the Choice of Hercules between Virtue and Vice (or Hard Work and Indolence, or even between Mind and Body).

I have decided to go beyond the potential of this artefact as, merely, a suitably – and attractively –

mythological setting for the event. I am also going to use the example to illustrate the work I am doing. The scope here is vast. For one thing, it serves as an example of where myth deals with a difficult moment: the Choice faced between two very different paths, represented by two very different females and their gifts. What’s more, in the eighteenth century, the myth was one that people were specifically engaging with as their made their own choices between what each of the women signalled – hard work on the one hand and leisure on the other, though also mind on the one hand as against the body. And the myth was, even, used in the eighteenth century to educate young people, as I have mentioned in previous work on this topic. There's an interview of me talking about the chimneypiece with Classics Confidential a few years back

And by doing this, I should be able to use the research I have done to date on this chimneypiece. Thus, to my pleasant surprise, I am finding once again that another aspect of my academic life is impacting on the autism and classical myth project.

I now want to update this educational potential in the Choice of Hercules. In particular I shall investigate how the episode can help: