What would Hercules do? What happened when I went on an interactive mythological adventure

When I was towards the end of primary school, I heard about a type of fiction that intrigued me – the trouble was that I felt that it was not for me on two grounds. One was that the age range listed was younger than I was. At this time I was finding that literature I’d loved was no longer ‘speaking’ to me quite as it had previously. The second was that it looked to be very much for boys. When I had previously tried to take part in cultural activities gendered as male it had not gone well. 

But I did very much like the sound of this type of fiction. Here the reader would not follow a book from beginning through middle to end but could find their own path based on the outcome of a dice throw or their own choice.

I have finally, today, been reading such a book: Hercules and His 12 Labors: An Interactive Mythological Adventure written by Anika Fajardo and illustrated by Nadine Takvorian for the series You Choose:Ancient Greek Myths.[1]
 

I found out about the book when I was ordering another one, on a similar topic. This other book, currently out of stock, is mentioned at the end of this posting. 

I began reading hoping that the book could have the potential to ‘speak’ to me, including because of how it seemed to resonate with my work to date on autism and classical myth. I am invariably frustrated at books for children – or anyone – which narrate classical myth as though there is a 'true' version of any particular story. This goes against one of the most exciting things about classical myth – the flexibility of the particular stories – their fluidity – the way in which each teller creates the myth afresh. So, a book where the reader can find their own route had me intrigued.

What is more, the book’s topic has a really good fit with the specific topic of the first set of activities for autistic children that I have put together. These resources centre around a decision that Hercules had to make at a crisis point. Each path will lead to a particular kind of future for Hercules, one a life of pleasure, the other a life of struggle. Each user of the resources can choose a particular path – and they can do this if they want by thinking about what Hercules would perhaps do, potentially helping stimulate theory of mind. Or they can make their own choice, potentially helping them think about how the present can turn into the future.

The book is also about choosing. It doesn’t deal with the specific episode that my activities involve. Instead, the reader encounters Hercules as he embarks on his twelve labours. As the reader gets to a particular point they make a choice between what they, as Hercules, should do next. Here is what happened to me the first time I made a choice. I decided that, as Hercules, I would opt for a way of dealing with particular tasks that seemed to be more in keeping with the kind of choice that a modern reader might make. I ended up being killed and directed to begin again or turn to a section at the back of the book giving information about who Hercules was.

I returned to the start, and again, the choice I made got me killed. This happened two more times. In all I was killed by the Amazons after I tried to reason with their queen, by the Stymphalian Birds’ knife-like feathers, by the followers of Eurystheus, and by the Hydra’s teeth.

Then I realised what the book was trying to do. It was presenting me with a series of choices where, each time, the user either follows the myth and moves to another stage in the career of the hero or does something different and is killed. Thus, the book does not involve choosing as I envisage it in my activities – where diverse choices are each paralleled in sources for Hercules, and where the user can, though their own choices, create their own way though the story.

Thus the book is taking a different approach to choosing in relation to Hercules' adventures from the one I am taking. That said, the book might have a use in relation to the preliminary activity I have devised where the children use existing resources to build up an awareness of Heracles and classical myth that might deepen their appreciation of the activities. 

I wonder whether there might be potential for a different kind of interactive book where taking a 'wrong' choice doesn’t lead invariably to the hero’s labours and life coming to an abrupt end: where, for instance, a decision to reason with the Amazon queen rather than steal her girdle equips the hero to continue to a fresh stage in his career. 

I’m waiting for the arrival of another interactive book concerning Hercules, which my fellow Our Mythical Childhood researcher, Ayelet Peer, has recommended to me: Brandon Terrell’s, Greek Mythology's Twelve Labors of Hercules: A Choose Your Path Book.[2] I look forward to seeing how this book enables the reader to find their own path through Herculean mythology.

---

[1] Capstone 2017. 

[2] Terrell, Brandon, Greek Mythology's Twelve Labors of Hercules: A Choose Your Path Book (Can You Survive? series) Lake 7 Creative 2013. 

Resource Pack 1: The Choice of Hercules - draft version for consultation and feedback

As I have mentioned in the previous two postings to this blog, my autism and classical myth project is moving to a new phase, where I seek feedback on  the activities I have designed concerning the Choice of Hercules. To help with this process it seemed a good idea to update the versions of the activities that I presented via this blog earlier in the year. I have, therefore, created a document that presents the activities along with an introduction explaining what they are seeking to achieve.

The document is here, on Academia. If you're unable to access it, do let me know and I could send you the pdf.

The picture that starts this posting is one of those discussed in the activities: please see page 10 of the pdf.

Feedback welcome via this blog, via emailing me at s.deacy@roehampton.ac.uk or via the Academic session I've started.



 

Autism and classical myth pilot study: breaking the news and introducing the researcher!

This is the second consecutive posting sharing good news relevant to my autism and classical myth work. As with the previous posting, this one concerns what I am now seeking to do, namely to start taking the activities around the Choice of Hercules that I have drafted into schools, where autistic children will have an opportunity to try them out.

The news is this. The University of Roehampton has provided funds for a pilot study of the resources. The study will be conducted by Effrosyni (Effie) Kostara, who has just been appointed as the Research Assistant for the project. It is my pleasure to introduce Effie!

Effie has a background both in Classics and in Education. Her first degree is in Classical Philology from the University of Athens. She then went on to gain a master’s degree in Applied Pedagogy from Athens. She is currently a PhD candidate in Adult Education at the Hellenic Open University writing a thesis that draws on both of her fields. The title is: Teachers’ Training in the Educational Use of Ancient Greek Tragedy for the Development of Learners’ Critical Reflection.

Effie has published papers, and delivered conference presentations, on the importance of critical reflection in adult education. She also has a role in training teachers in the use of ancient drama as an educational tool. She is currently working on a project involving the connection of pedagogy with the ideas of Socrates and Aristotle.

Effie is the co-editor of a forthcoming Routledge volume on transformative learning and is the translator, into Greek, of Knud Illeris’ How we Learn. She participated in an event at Roehampton on diversity, inclusivity and classics in autumn 2017 and is the author of a report of the event, published just a few days ago in CUCD Bulletin.

Effie is deeply interested in the use of classical texts for the development of more inclusive teaching approaches. Her work includes using drama for teaching people from ‘marginalised’ groups including prisoners and addicts. She is about to start work, on Monday 16^th July, in a different – though not unrelated – capacity at Roehampton as ERASMUS+ fellow to develop a module provisionally titled ‘Diversity in Ancient Greek Drama.’

I look forward to sharing further news about Effie and the pilot study!

Autism and classical mythology: workshop for autism experts

I am writing to post some news that I have recently received. This is news that will have an impact - potentially a huge impact - on my autism and classical myth project now that I have completed the first set of resources.

(For anyone checking for the first time, I have created a set of activities based around an episode in the myth of Hercules, a figure with vast potential in relation to autism - see easier postings for details, not least those from February 2018.)

I am going to be organising an event which will take place at Roehampton later this summer or in the early autumn. It will be for autism experts and practitioners, to seek feedback on the first set of resources. I'll share more in due course, but let me mention for now that those taking part are due to include some of the experts whom I have already mentioned in this blog - and whose work has inspired what I've been trying to do!

The image that heads this posting is of Senate House, the home of the Institute of Classical Studies. This is because it is thanks to the support of the Institute of Classical Studies that the event will take place. I applied recently for Public Engagement Grant to run the event and I heard a few days ago that the application was successful.

I am planning to hold the event in the Adam Room, the location of the Choice of Hercules chimneypiece panel on which the resources are based.

I intend to refine the 'Herculean' activities in light of this collaborative involvement. Then, informed by this input from the workshop, I shall begin work on my second set of activities. These will likely be connected with a different mythological figure, Medusa, and will include activities that include mask-making and music composition. 

As with the Hercules activities, these will be published on my blog for immediate dissemination. They will also, like the Hercules activities, be piloted in schools (on this pilot activity, please watch this space!).

It's thanks to the ICS that the event can happen! I'm honoured to be able to add their logo to my blog:

Antique Fables and Shaping Fantasies: Dreaming Classics while looking ahead to engaging autistic and other children during Being Human 2018

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.

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.