Autism and Classical Myth: Among the Ciceronians in December 2019

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.

Friday 15 January 2021

Among the Ciceronians in December 2019

My work building up activities for autistic children involving classical myth has taken me down unexpected paths. One of these has been a Ciceronian one above all when, in late 2019, I spent several days in Warsaw immersed in discussions about Cicero and his writings on education in the midst of Ciceronian scholars from around the globe at the congress Cicero, Society and the Idea of Artes Liberales.

A volume of papers from this event has recently been published and it is pleasure to include a link to the preface by Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak which includes comments about my project and how it is being informed by Cicero's discussion of the difficult choices children can experience when on the cusp of adulthood in the De officiis. These comments are on the fourth and five pages of the pdf - pp. 264-5.

The image at the head of this current posting shows the assembled delegates. I'm the one holding the 2019 poster.

I have reflected previously on Cicero including here when I was about to leave for Warsaw and here soon after my return to the UK. My plans for 2021 and beyond include further explorations around how Cicero might 'speak' to what it is to experience the world in an autistic way...