Autism and Classical Myth: Why this blog is like my garden

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 3 March 2023

Why this blog is like my garden

Pleasure's garden - detail of Steve Simons' redrawing
of Choice of Hercules panel, Adam Room, Roehampton, London

I've said a few times over the years on this blog that autism isn't about a week in March/April - or indeed a whole month. It's always there - a way of being. But, still, there's something about a particular occasion that gives a focal point - a fixed point - a sense of structure.

And so, I'm going to spend this March and April blogging after a break: a break when I have been seriously active, including:

Doing the final things to my book of Hercules-themed lessons for autistic children to lift it out of produce, most recently working on the index. The book will be out this year and I'm...
Planning the next mythological phrase, again based around a mythological figure, the identity of whom I'll announce soon, perhaps during Autism Acceptance Week.
Reading some wonderful books by autistic and neurodivergent authors including Nick Walker's Neuroqueer Heresies and a Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll
Drafting quite a few postings for this blog which I'd better start typing up (I always write long-hand first).

There's more: but that'll do for now like when I pause for and from gardening at the moment. The garden had got away from me but, for the last two weeks I've been out there for half an hour to an hour most weekdays and it's becoming mine...