Out of elitist enclaves: bringing Hercules into the world (resource pack introduction, part 3)

Our Mythical Hope delegates plus Hercules, Tyszkiewicz-Potocki Palace

I built up to an ambitious claim in my previous posting, namely that there is potential for using the figure of Hercules to cut across various things that are normally at odds. As I said, this is a pretty big claim to be making in light of just how often Hercules has been co-opted by those at the top of political and cultural hierarchies – from Alexander the Great to Richelieu and beyond – and earlier still, perhaps as far back as the archaic Athenian tyrant Peisistratos. The picture at the start of this posting shows another kind of elitist Hercules, in the stairwell of the Tyszkiewicz-Potocki Palace, one of the most magnificent of the eighteenth-century neoclassical palaces in Warsaw.* What's more, in my previous posting, I didn’t stop with a claim for Hercules as one that might breech social, political and educational elites. I also raised the possibility of a Hercules that might ‘speak’ to anyone, regardless of gender, and regardless of ability or disability.

I said in that previous posting that I had been confirmed in my thinking that Hercules might be rescued from his various elitist co-optings by an experience last year, around a year ago now, at a session with a group of young women who hadn’t, previously, studied any Classics. They drew a good deal from a representation of Hercules that was in front of us – in the Adam Room in Grove House at the University of Roehampton. They found that it could ‘speak’ to their own lives, especially the choices they make in life. In that previous posting, I was commenting on another piece – which I wrote for Liz Hale’s Antipodean Odyssey blog as my ‘Saturnalian Surprise.’ The surprise that I wrote about was my surprise that the girls didn’t always look at the artefact in the way that I look at it.

When I look at it, I am drawn to its central figure because I have some knowledge about who it is – Hercules – and what it is that is happening to him as he encounters two women. The girls, instead, tended to be drawn to the two women, and to how they were responding to the man in between them. This was a surprise for me. I have always stressed the potential that myth has to be received in ever-fresh ways, including beyond the intentions of the creator. My forays into classical reception have been informed by Charles Martindale’s observation (maxim even…), quoted from memory, that ‘meaning is always realized at the moment of reception.’[1]  But this particular instance of reception is one that I didn’t see coming.

One effect of the experience was to confirm something that I had already thought, namely that myth has the potential for reaching people – for ‘speaking’ to people – irrespective of their background, and irrespective of what existing knowledge of myth that they are bringing to it. And since the experience in front of Hercules, I have made the decision to select this artefact as the basis for the first set of materials that I am creating for use with autistic children.

This is the episode in question... Once it was among the best-known of all stories about Hercules – that was in the eighteenth century. It doesn’t have such a status now – but I would hold that what made it popular in the eighteenth century is rife for being draw on now, for use with children, including autistic children. I shall soon give an overview of the story – although I am aware that some of the users of the resources will find the story hard – if not impossible – to follow. Other users, meanwhile, might be able to engage with the story and, potentially, relate it to their own experiences. In any case, those facilitating the use of the resources will be likely to benefit from a knowledge of the story.

It is very difficult to give a summary of most stories from classical myth. If, that is the teller want so stick closely to the original evidence. There are many retellings of myth, including for children and I those the author is likely to have selected those aspects that they deem suitable for their own particular audience. For example, many retellers of myth for children skate over aspects of the ancient stories with which a modern readership might feel uncomfortable. Perhaps the most striking example of this concerns the numerous examples of sexual encounters in myth which involve rape or other forms of sexual violence [examples to follow]. The myths of Hercules have, likewise, been adapted in such a way as not to upset audiences. Disney’s Hercules for example [more to follow].

This is not, in itself, either a good or a bad thing. Modern retellers of myth are also tellers of myth – they are continuing a tradition that began in antiquity of constantly updating stories to suit a fresh audience. Thus, the ancient stories were ever on the move – ever being changed for new audiences. This could include omitting some elements, exaggerating others and, even, adding new components. Even the very first extant ancient Greek author, Homer, was selective in what he drew on. The only thing that makes assessing how Homer used myth different from assessing how a later author used myth is the frustrating lack of anything earlier than Homer – this makes it difficult to know what exactly Homer was doing with a given mythical element, Hercules included [more to follow!].

It might, however, seem at times like a bad thing to those developing an interest in the stories. When someone is introduced to a myth in a certain way, it can be unsettling to find that another retelling presents the same story differently.

In the case of the episode I am dealing with here, it is possible to circumvent these issues. For there are relatively few ancient representations of the myth. Thus, when I talk about ‘the ancient story,’ I can do so with greater authority that would be possible for many others. This might be comforting to anyone who likes to be able to gain a sense of what a myth entails. It also enables any teacher to become well versed in the story, irrespective of how much classical myth they themselves have previously encountered.

I have been confirmed further in this thinking by a comment by Liz Hale in her introduction to my posting for her Saturnalian Surprise series. She comments that my work “shows us the practical and activist aspects of a classical education.’ She comments that it does this by “bringing it out of elitist enclaves and into the world.” In the next posting, I shall start to show more precisely how I aim to bring Hercules out of such an enclave.

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[1] For an excellent account of classical reception as pioneered by Martindale see this BMCR review, by Sheila Murnaghan, of the following edited volume: Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas, ed. Classics and the Uses of Reception, Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.  


* An update on 9 Feb 2018: visitors who have opened this posting before today might remember that I could initially only manage to upload a grainy, low-resolution version of the photo of the delegates plus Hercules in his enclave. I’ve now, at last, managed to put up a sharper version.