Autism and Classical Myth: Heracles Chariot Racing

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.

Tuesday, 15 January 2019

Heracles Chariot Racing

As I began to disclose in my previous posting, I am currently beginning to map out the topic of my second set of activities for autistic children. As I said, these will include a chariot-riding Herakles.

In the past 18 months or so, I have been thinking out the potential for video games as a means to engage autistic children. This is in the aftermath of a paper at a conference on teaching students with anxiety by Steve Hunt on his experiences teaching Latin to a student whose engagement with Latin was informed by video games.

These two things, an ancient chariot-riding Herakles and video games came together recently for me: in ways that might lead somewhere in relation to the activities, or which I might only ever share here as the unexpected discovery of yet another Heraklean reception. The discovery is this: Hercules Chariot Racing, a Playstation game developed in 2007 by Neko Entertainment.

There will be one outcome at least, though: namely an entry on the game for the Our Mythical Childhood Survey by the Roehampton team to add to the growing Herakles entries (try a 'Hercules' or 'Herakles' search) and to the growing list of games included in the resource...