I was at a meeting recently
where a colleague said something that took me by surprise. The colleague was distinguishing
between two kinds of modules on the classical curriculum – language and
non-language. The colleague described the former as ‘real’ Classics and then
stopped without finishing the sentence. The implication, I suppose, was that
the other kind of Classics is something like ‘pretend Classics’ – or ‘false Classics’.
The kind of Classics that my
colleague didn’t name is the kind that I do. I don’t avoid the study of languages
– it’s more that I see the languages as part of the fabric of components that make
up the study of classical antiquity. I did feel a little taken aback by the comment
– it brought up the sense that runs deep in the discipline, namely that there is a
hierarchy between those who do languages and those who do everything else. This
division frustrates me – given how complicated, for example, it is to look at a
culture and seek to explore its various aspects. This includes what I especially
work on: a particular culture’s imaginative processes, including the
gods that were created and recreated, and the myths that were vibrant and ever
changing.
But what I decided to do
was this. I decided to contrast ‘real’ not with ‘false’ but with ‘fantasy’ or ‘dream.’
In French, this works better – there’s the réel (‘real’) and the rêve (‘dream’). This ‘fantasy Classics’ can involve the study
of stories that were created in antiquity: the ‘antique fables’ that Theseus
describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
as ‘strange’ rather than ‘true’:
More strange than true. I never may believe | These antique fables nor these fairy toys.| Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, | Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend | More than cool reason ever comprehends. (1.5.2-6)
Such a ‘fantasy Classics’ can
also involve the study of how, since antiquity, classical myth has been able to
engage the imagination. The ancient world doesn’t exist any longer. but the
very fact that it doesn’t exist could be what makes it have such a hold over
us. And it means that we can each of us have our own version of the ancient
world – drawn from our own imaginations.
What I am writing here is
very much in line with ‘Deep Classics.’ My colleague Helen Slaney is a pioneer
of this way of doing Classics. In one of the Our Mythical Workshops in Warsaw
last month, she summed it up as follows, building on the volume Deep Classics, edited by Shane Butler:
The ancient world no longer exists and this is why we love it. Acts of reception are a way of making it imaginatively present, a form of deep play.
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| Grove House, home of the Hercules chimneypiece panel, as photographed yesterday by Kathryn Tempest |
Roehampton is a place where
the ancient world can have this kind of presence. It is this potential that
makes the chimneypiece panel that I selected for my first set of resources so
full of potential (see here for instance where the panel has been 'animalised'.
This was something that struck me the workshop last month at
the café managed by autistic people in Warsaw – where the participants did
inventive things with the pictures I have provided of the panel: colouring in,
cutting out, adding emojis, adding details, rearranging…
Thus far, I have shown
one of the creations, the one by Anna Mik – at the start of the last posting-but-one on this blog. It's the one I mentioned above - concerning an 'animalised' Hercules. In due
course, I shall share others too.
For now, I want to share
details of a use I am going to be making of the Roehampton university
campus. Along with Helen Slaney, just mentioned, and another colleague, Susanne
Greenhalgh, an expert on Shakespearean drama, I will be putting on a series of events
for this November’s Being Human Festival. We heard recently that our funding
bid had been successful!
We proposed a set of events
that deal with the potential of encounters with the classical world to engage
the imagination of children. Under the title Antique Fables...Shaping Fantasies we will do three things, some in
collaboration with cultural partners. One is this – in the University Library’s
archive room there will be a week-long exhibition of illustrated children’s
classics. We will also be arranging a talk with an author-illustrator about her
work adapting Shakespeare and mythology. I shall say more about this further
down the road – when I shall name her!
Thirdly – and with the most explicit fit
with my autism and classical mythology project and indeed with the title of
this posting - we will be working with the Flute Theatre, who will stage an immersive performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for children on the autistic spectrum. I’ll
say more on this in due course, including where I write about who the Flute are
and about the work they do.
Throughout the
events, we will be exploring how far adaptations of classically-rich works for
children seek to introduce the richness, strangeness, and complexity of human
experience. What we will be doing is grounded in a view that classic texts
exist in a range of forms and that there is no ‘correct’ way of coming into
contact with them. Rather, each participant in our events will be able – we hope
– to have their own imaginative engagement with classical antiquity.
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