Here Comes Hercules - with me live blogging and finding the book as good as it was recommended to be with Hesiodic moments

Around a year ago, I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the Ure Museum of Classical Antiquity with the members of the Reading branch of the YAC: the Young Archaeologists' Club. 

For the session, I adapted one of the lessons from my book of lessons for autistic children based around the figure of Hercules. When I blogged about the session last year,* I mentioned that as well as being very engaged with the figure of Hercules and with the challenges of making sense of this figure as well as other mythological figures, some of the young people recommended to me some reading I could do as a follow up. 

The most enthusiastic suggestion made was that I should read a book in series called Hopeless Heroes on Hercules. The kids seemed quite sad that I didn't yet know this book - or any of its companions. They were excited for me that I could now discover the world it conjures up.

I went ahead and bought the full set. 

Hopeless Heroes series, by Stella Tarakson illustrated by Nick Roberts, Sweet Cherry 2018-2020

Now, finally, I'm reading the books - and I'm going to do something I've done previously. As I read, I'm going to live blog, or at least this is the plan. I've not blogged recently - while I've been focusing on some other projects. I've been missing it.

So here goes volume 1: Here Comes Hercules.

We start in the modern day, presumably in the UK, where a young boy called Tim is alone in the house doing housework while his mother is at her second job as a cleaner. As he starts doing a task that he dislikes doing - dusting - he manages to knock over and break one of the many objects that clutter the house, a large vase. 

What makes the breakage especially unfortunate is that it's the one object that, his mother has told him, is worth anything. Indeed, were she to sell it she wouldn't need to be doing the second job. The thing is: it was a gift from her husband, Tim's father, before he died. 

As Tim contemplates mending the vase, on which a strong man is depicted with a huge bull, he's aware that there's a huge man in the room with me, Hercules, relieved to be released and a bit surprised that Tim doesn't have a clue who he is,

I'm wondering why it's so often Hercules who figures in time travel fiction - either where classical myth intrudes into the modern world or where someone goes back in time. There's Francesca Simon's Helping Hercules for instance. One possibility is the popularity of Hercules, not least in children's culture in the wake of the 1997 Disney film - after which Hercules has never been the same like Barbie presumably never will be the same in the wake of The Barbie Movie. 

Because anything can be made Herculean, here's a picture of Ryan Gosling from Barbie since - helping contribute to Hercules in youth culture in the 1990s - he was Young Hercules.

Ryan Gosling in 2017 - details here

Another possibility could be what it is Hercules does, namely carry out difficult tasks.

Having Hercules explain who he is is a nice way to introduce classical myth to readers who don't 'have' any knowledge as they start reading...

I have to write down this from page 23 between Hercules and Tim: which is beautifully Hesiodic - gods never were, always are...

'My father is lord of the sky and ruler of Mount Olympus', the man said, pulling himself to his full height. 'You must know of him.'

'Mount Olympus? Like in mythology? Greek gods and stuff? [...] They're just stories. They're not real.'

Ooh it's got interesting - channeling something not I THINK in ancient sources for Hercules but a trope used e.g. for Andromeda, Hercules explains that he's been trapped in the vase since Hera put him in there out of jealousy for his mother 'who is far more beautiful than her' (p. 24).

Oh and I've just got to a theme that I think I've seen in children's receptions, namely what is the usefulness of Hercules - Tim says (still 24): 'Flexing muscles and wrestling cattle wouldn't get the housework done'.

Ah very Herculean now - he's realised he is hungry and eating enthusiastically.

And a nice touch at p. 38: Hercules takes to the task of clearing the garden of weeds by decapitating dandelions and on realising that, as Tim tells him 'that only makes them come back faster', that 'They must be like the many-headed Hydra. Every time you (39) chopped a head off, it would grow right back'. 

I've just made the same point in an academic article (on the Hydra for the Oxford Handbook of Classical Monsters - not out yet): that is on the Hydra being botanical-like - though I went further and considered how far she is not just plant like but a figure with plant features.

Right now Hercules is doing to the flowers what he did eventually to all the hydra's heads - namely, sear them with vividly humorous results leaving the garden devastated.

And now Hercules is trying to help again by slaying a tiger skin he thinks is a living tiger, showing, Tim thinks that - fitting the usual way of receiving Hercules as non-intelligent strong man - 'Hercules might be super-strong, but he wasn't super-smart' (62).

Oh and he wraps the tiger skin round Tim saying it will protect him from arrows.

I didn't mention that the only other character so far, Tim's mother, hasn't been able to see or hear Hercules. Now on the way to school, recalling the dogs in the Odyssey who can sense the invisible Odysseus, a large black dog - who I assume will be taken to be Cerberus - being walked by its owner senses Hercules.

Yes Cerberus: a really good way to introduce classical myths in a hands-on way.

Now at school, we meet the school bully Leo - who will presumably become the object of a first labour for Tim to parallel Hercules's encounter with the lion. The teacher is Miss Omiros. The best friend is Ajay - equalling Ajax?

They get home and, suggesting the cleaning of the Augean stables, Hercules has cleaned the whole house - but overdone it.

Several sets of quests then unfold - Hercules, who deeply wants to get back to his wife and daughter, realises that the ancient Greek inscription, now hard to read because of the fragmentary state of the vase, contains the means to get him back. But the solution of how to get him home is in the form of a riddle which Hercules doesn't have the ability to decipher. Tim can't work it out either and Hercules gets despondent, not even wanting to eat. 

When the depressed Hercules doesn't come to Tim's aid when Leo is bullying him, Tim manages to trick Leo, concluding that issue.

Meanwhile, Tim's mother, who has had a novel rejected 10 times, successfully pitches a book called Hercules the Housekeeper based on the stories Tim has told her about Hercules whom she considers to be made up by Tim - or does she - she has just told Tim (158) that it's a 'wonderful secret' that he has shared. 

Right now I am stuck that this book is really good - better than most: less clunky, more immersive - better than the first Percy Jackson which I didn't get far with (more for another time), more nuanced...

It turns out that the 'secret' is the answer to the riddle - nice! After Hercules is transported back to Greek myth, and Hera and Hermes come to try to get the vase, Tim manages to get to the vase first, aware that he now needs to look after it well. 

Here the book ends but with a preview of Tim's next adventure which turns out to the next book in the series: Hera's Terrible Trap.

So the books are all connected - I hadn't realised. Well: to book two soon... But so far so good, very good indeed. This might even be the most immersive, inventive and yet engaged-with-ancient-versions classical myth book for young people (7-9) I've read.

* I went to add the hyperlink to the blog posting on the Ure session, but I must have only drafted it and not typed it up. That is something I need to put right: a future task then...

Plan B: slides for Fairer Societies

I was wondering about the best Plan B in case the slides I've emailed ahead of an event I'm taking part in on Saturday don't get through for some reason. Then I had this idea: put them into a blog post...

Here they are: they are for the workshop "Ancient World Studies and Fairer Societies" and, like several other taking part, I'll be talking about working with young people who are in PRUs (Pupil Referral Units). In my previous posting, I said a little about the event.

The labels for this postings seek to convey the range of things that I plan to mention prompted by these slides...

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...

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it' - A Choice of Hercules workshop at Life is Cool, a café managed by autistic people in Warsaw

I had been a little concerned that the paper I was to deliver in Warsaw yesterday was a little out there. It is Herculean. It runs with the metaphor of the crossroads. It pauses for a moment with Jacques Brel and it makes a brief consideration of the metis of Jogi Berra. But the experience of actually delivering it was ‘out there’ on a whole other level.

Firstly, we arrived late at the venue, a café called Life is Cool which is managed by autistic staff. This lateness was owing to travel disruption and sudden bad weather. While waiting for our colleagues who still hadn’t left the previous venue, let alone got into a taxi and joined the traffic jam across Warsaw, I reversed the order of the session and began with the interactive activity before I’d actually explained what lay behind it. The (incredible - it merits a posting in its own right) picture accompanying this posting was done by one of the participants.

When our colleagues were still stuck at the previous venue, I began, sadly, without them. There were several pauses as people arrived, and each time, I went back over the material for those who’d joined us. The final group arrived just as I’d finished. I’m going to set out here a written-up version of the paper from my notes for yesterday. This is so that those present can experience it as I’d more or less intended – as can anyone else who might be interested.

But, in fact, the disruption led to something that was probably better in terms of how the activity worked and in terms of the depth I was able to go into – and in terms of the depth in which people were able to respond. The discussion, indeed, was the best that I have ever experienced after any paper I have given. I’ll write about that in a subsequent posting. For now, here is the beginning-middle-activity-ending version, Brel, Berra and all.

I’d like to say first that it’s an honour to be here – in this city I’m in love with, amid Our Mythical Childhood participants – a ‘family’ – and here, in Life is Cool. It has been my dream for ten years now to produce materials that might speak to autistic people. I have started producing materials, and now, today, I am realising my dream of presenting them in space that is marked out as autistic.

Often, autistic people devote energy to trying to work within non-autistic space. Here we have an example of the opposite being the case - of a space for all where autism is at the centre. Thank you to Katarzyna Marciniak – and the café – for making this happen – for bringing us to this intersection.

It is also an honour to be here as part of events under the aegis of ‘Where the past meets the future’ and where it does this as part of ‘our heritage.’ This inclusive title captures something that I want to explore, namely that heritage can be for everyone, and this can include those for whom access to culture that many share can be a challenge.

Our heritage can be a heritage that embraces everyone, irrespective of such factors as class background, or gender, or disability or ability. It is apt, then, that we are gathering under the ‘aegis’ of Medusa, our ‘spokesmonster’ as Katarzyna Marciniak puts it in the blurb for this week’s events. Medusa is an everyone, an everymonster, figure. Medusa is the ultimate image of otherness and also of self. Medusa is also an image of victimhood and of empowerment, an image of disability and of ability, and of disability as ability.

When our project began, I was envisaging a set of activities around the Medusa story – including mask-making. And this is something that I plan to do in the future. For the first set of activities, I determined instead on an episode in the career of… Hercules. I shall talk today about 'why Hercules?', and I’ll introduce the activities that I have put together.

“Where the past meets the future…” we are at an intersection point – or a crossroads. My title is “at every crossroads” – it’s a translation of French – “à chaque carrefour” from Jacques Brel’s Quand on n’a que l’amour, from the verse:

Quand on n’a que l’amour

Pour tracer un chemin

Et forcer la destin

À chaque carrefour

When we have only love 

To trace a path

And force destiny

At every crossroads

Getting to a crossroads involves making a choice – between different paths, metaphorical or otherwise. The choice in question might be a stark one, in two divergent directions. Why I have been talking so much about crossroads is as follows – the activities I have designed are based around a particular moment in the mythic life of Hercules, namely when he reaches a crossroads, a carrefour.

He is a young man not sure, yet, what direction to take. He gets to a lonely place when two women appear, goddesses perhaps, and offer him a choice. He could take the path signalled by one of them, which will involve a life of ease and pleasure and abundance,  and plenty of food and drink and indeed access to all pleasures. Or he could take the path signalled by the other woman. This will be a path of ‘virtue’ or hard work. There will be rewards at the end, but only after toil and pain and suffering.

I have picked this episode because it is rich in potential for engaging an autistic way of thinking. In very broad terms. Hercules, like many mythological figures, has huge potential for engaging autistic people. For instance, he is frequently an outsider – at home in the borderlands but out of place in society. Indeed, when he is in society – when he returns home or arrives at some city – his behaviour can be inappropriate. Yet Hercules also has a richly exciting life. He is ever coming up against obstacles and overcoming them.

Being autistic is often seen as about encountering hardships. Hercules can speak to this aspect of an autistic experience. Being autistic is also about a different way of thinking – a different way of being. Hercules can speak too to this autistic experience.

These two aspects of Hercules come into play in the particular artefact on which my first set of activities is based. It is an eighteenth-century panel depicting Hercules engaged in reflection on the two paths he is invited to choose between. It is in an eighteenth-century ‘showpiece’ room at the University of Roehampton, where I work – and one thing I am hoping to do at some point is, actually, to welcome people to that room to engage in activities with the artefact, not least because the closer one looks, the more one can draw from it. The ‘Choice of Hercules’ was a talking point for the eighteenth century, where those receiving it were encouraged to use it to reflect on where they stand between competing paths.

In the activities, I take the user through the episode. There is an optional introductory activity for those who have not yet ‘met’ Hercules. This uses works that figure/will figure in Our Mythical Survey, launched just yesterday, ranging from books to music to pillow-fight cushions and to Playmobil and Lego minifigures.

Then there are activities that take the user through the episode: from the arrival at a strange place, to noticing certain things about the place, to noticing the two women. There are activities where users reflect on what the hero might be experiencing in his interactions with each woman. There are also activities which reflect on things from the perspective of the two women – and on how they seek to engage him. Then, finally, we move to the hero’s choice.

What choice does he make? Usually it’s thought to be the path of… virtue and the life of hardship. But this is not necessarily the case. On the panel, Hercules turns his head to Virtue, but his body to Pleasure/Vice and Hercules is the great lover of life, of food drink and sex.

The late Yogi Berra, the baseball player and coach, is known for his wisdom – a sideways wisdom, a wisdom of metis. His quotations are worthy of Heraclitus – where impossibilities are combined – where they exist in one another. He also said: ‘when you come to a fork in the road, take it.’

Hercules chooses one path – he chooses the other path. There is rich potential for exploring different perspectives on a given issue. And for thinking about how the present can turn into the future.

As the activities progress, features of the scene gradually come to be introduced – Hercules appears, then the landscape, then the women. For today, I began by showing the whole artefact. But in the activities, it will be introduced gradually – and this will help avoid overloading the users. It is a richly detailed image, with very many things going on, such as in terms of its vegetation, and in terms of the objects present – such as a drinking vessel, a helmet, a snake and bowls of fruit. What I would like to do now is get you thinking about your responses to the artefact – via activities that have a fit with those I have devised.

I would like you to pick part of the artefact and colour it in. You can do it in groups – or alone – as you prefer. Or - do your own drawing if you would like. Alternatively, you can trace the scene or one of its figures. You can use stickers if you would like, including the emojis… I discuss using emojis in the activities as described on the blog, to encourage the students to think about how Hercules – or the women – might be feeling. Is he happy, for instance, or worried. Or the users could move, where suited, to more complex emojis – ‘cold sweat’ for instance, or ‘smiling and sweating.’ You can also, if you would like, draw something based round the image: a flower for example.

And also, if you would like, write something in this – a guest book. This is something that I have been inspired to start by the work of Zena Kamash of Royal Holloway University. In her work with people from Middle Eastern communities, she includes a guest book. People are encouraged to write in their thoughts, and do drawings if they would like. Draw Hercules if you’d like – or stick in your tracing etc., or draw something based around the image. Do it straight into the book, or on paper, or a post-it that we can stick in later. Or write words that strike you onto labels. Sign it – or don’t! - as you prefer.

In conclusion, the activities are intended to be inclusive and thought-provoking. I hope that they offer an opportunity to think about such matters as how the present turns into the future, how to cope with new scenarios and change, and how to engage in decision making. They offer a gateway to classical myth and culture. They also open up a gateway between two worlds, 'autistic' and 'non-autistic'. The activities have a serious purpose. They are also intended to be fun. Indeed, as we have been discussing regularly over the past few days at these meetings and workshops for the Mythical Childhood project where play stops and serious work begins can – or should – be fluid.

Choice Activities: Why? and Where Next?

I am writing this posting after a very busy few weeks introducing then presenting my first set of resources. This posting is intended as a conclusion to these resources, although it could equally be read as an introduction. Blogger presents postings in reverse chronological order – and this could be the first time some readers encounter what I have been doing.

I have said some of what follows already – but for anyone new to the blog, or for anyone who has got a bit lost along this Herculean journey, here is a summary of some of key things I am seeking to achieve.

Why autism and classical mythology?

In 2008, I was meeting with a special needs teacher who told me that one thing she and her colleagues had noticed over the years was that autistic children often respond well, and sometimes with enthusiasm, to learning about classical mythology. As a classicist interested in classical myth, I was intrigued to find out why this might be the case. I began to wonder whether, as classicist specialising in mythology, I might have something specific to contribute towards using myth with autistic children.

I started contacting academics in disciplines including Psychology and Education and also professionals working in various ways with autistic children, and I kept being encouraged to push forward. For instance, the special needs teachers and dramatherapists I spoke with consistently said that they were repeatedly looking for new resources and that stories provide valuable sources for materials. This led to an unexpected turn in my career towards becoming interested in autism and disability more broadly. I started this blog, in early 2009 to report on my progress. I decided to do this because I was aware that I had many other projects ongoing – but by blogging as and when I thought I had something to share, I could at least report sporadically on my progress.

For the first few years after 2009 – indeed, until the ERC-funded project began in 2016, I did indeed blog sporadically, often with lengthy gaps between postings. But what happened too was that several specialists who work with autistic people made contact with me and, by the time we began on the funding bid to the ERC, I had made several valuable and valued contacts, and written circa 20,000 words around aspects of autism, myth and disability studies, including on the possibility of viewing stories associated with Perseus through an autistic lens, the potential for Aristotle’s theory of catharsis as used in dramatherapy to “reach” autistic people, and how the hero/monster metaphor might inform the quest for disruptive pedagogies in Higher Education.

During this time, this interest in autism and classical myth led to some unexpected interfaces between my various roles in my institution. For instance, I became a Departmental Disability Co-ordinator, and this enabled me to work with the disability team at my institution. The blog provided a forum for reporting on this new direction in my practice, including a role in organising training for colleagues in how to support the needs of autistic students.

Why Hercules? Autism and challenges

For around a decade, then, and especially since the launch, in October 2016, of the European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood... The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges, I have been exploring the potential for classical mythology to respond to some of these challenges by exploring new ways to open up cultural experiences for autistic children.

This includes the development of a first set of resources, for use by those who work with autistic children, around the adventures of Herakles – Hercules in Roman stories and many modern retellings, including the one that has been providing the focus for the first set of resources I have developed. Hercules – I shall switch from here on to the Roman spelling – is a mythological figure with especially rich potential in the autistic “classroom,”[1] especially his difficult journeys into fantasy lands and his comparably difficult experiences in the mundane world, where he often remains an outsider.

In creating these resources, I have been aiming to draw on the potential of Herculean stories in: stimulating the imagination, extending experience, developing social and personal skills, giving cultural experience and aiding interaction with others.

For autistic young people, the challenges of childhood can be all the more acute as they find ways to make sense of experiences, develop imaginations, learn to plan for the future, and try to make sense of where they fit within time and space. I have been exploring what role is there for myths of Hercules as part of the quest to help change the experiences of autistic people. This hero keeps resurfacing at key cultural moments with a presence that Alistair Blanshard articulates as follows: “Stories about Hercules do far more than just recount amazing exploits, they take us into the hard of the culture that celebrates them.”[2]

I shall explore how far the potential of Hercules to express key concerns in a culture can be extended in relation to work with autistic children. I shall do this particularly in relation to the Choice of Hercules between two divergent paths in life. This is a myth with distinguished history of expressing contemporary concerns about children.

Autistic children characteristically experience a range of hardships over and above those experienced by other children. They find it difficult, for example, to know what to say or do in social situations, or to respond to the subtle cues that other children learn more easily. It is especially hard for an autistic child to do the kind of things that are, or come to be, innate for others, for instance how to initiate or maintain a conversation. Autistic children will find it harder than their peers to read body language or facial expressions – or any form of non-verbal conversation. Interpreting things like tone of voice will likely prove difficult too.

Beyond this, developing any rapport with others will likely be a challenge. And they will find it hard, too, to gauge what others are thinking or feeling. These difficulties in communication will tend to be compounded by difficulties over processing information. Autistic children will likely find it hard to think beyond the present and they might well find it hard to understand that the present can turn into the future. They will often find it difficult to understand the “bigger picture” in any given scenario, preferring instead to focus on particular details. Autistic children also find it hard to deal with changes in routine, preferring instead set and repetitive patterns of behaviour. Added to this, they will characteristically experience heightened sensory perceptions such an acute reaction to noise or smell. 

Why Hercules? Embodied differences

However, during the past decade, while I have been developing this blog, understandings of autism have been developing, including an increased sense of the challenges that autistic people face and also the how vital it is not only to seek to “reach” autistic people but also to gain a deeper understanding of the world of each autistic person. This move, away from autism as something only needing be something to be pathologised as an impairment is something that I am have been seeking to explore. Indeed, a key goal is to show how the activities connected with Hercules might be able to open up new cultural and intellectual opportunities for autistic children.

Where next?

Hercules, the ancient hero and the hero that has been co-opted at key moments since antiquity, can offer Hope for autistic children as they negotiate challenges on their journeys towards adulthood. This is my conviction. Once I have turned this conviction into something tangible though completing the first set of resources for use with autistic children, I shall seek feedback from professionals and rework them in light of their comments. I shall report on my progress on this blog. More soon.

Here ends the most intensive (and most visited!) to date month on this blog….

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[1] For the debate between whether there should be a distinctively autistic classroom in the sense of a space that supports the learning of those diagnosed as autistic, or whether to support the move towards an inclusive classroom that supports the learning of all, autistic and otherwise, see Rita Jordan “Autistic Spectrum Disorders,” in Ann Lewis and Brahm Norwich eds., Special Teaching For Special Children? A Pedagogy for Inclusion (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005): 110-120.

[2] Alistair Blanshard, Hercules: A Heroic Life (London: Granta, 2005), xviii.