I base this piece off of a few things. First, my blog from my trip to Italy this past summer. I only include places that I’ve been because the point of this assignment is to take a piece we previously wrote and to re-purpose it as a different genre. In this case, I took my blog post and re-purposed it into a short children’s story, which brings me to my next source of inspiration: The Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh. While I could go could on and on about Pooh, suffice to say I love it, and I love it because of its unique genre conventions, like the interplay between the characters and the narrator and the jokes meant for adults that children would not understand.

You can see examples of Pooh-ness throughout my piece as I play with time. There are clear anachronisms, such as referring to the Trevi Fountain before it was created, however in Pooh logic this is okay because Pooh is written from the perspective of a child before the linear temporality of time really solidifies. Furthermore, the narrator speaks in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, even 4th person, which breaks down walls between the audience and the narrator just as the anachronisms break down walls between the story and its historical, temporal boundaries.

Also, I try to bring in outside references and higher-level critiques throughout to keep the adult audience entertained. While following the Winnie-the-Pooh model and thus being written primarily for children, the story speaks as much to adults for its unique, charming style (at least in theory!). I want to mimic this in my own way by bringing in intellectual elements that adults would understand that go over the heads of children. For example, I call out religion and the Church in an almost impudent manner in Chapter IV and then hypocritically say the narrator’s son should just listen to his father. A child would do just that: listen to their father. However, adults can see through the hypocrisy. Another example is never naming male characters in the story of Perseus to highlight its feminist elements and absolute lack of female agency in the myth.

Finally, I try to unpack the sheer absurdity of Roman mythology while still staying within the confines of the genre conventions. From Romulus killing Remus because they didn’t think of starting settlements on different hills to Medusa being turned into a monster because she was raped by Poseidon, there’s lots of (sometimes tragic) illogic I try to poke fun at. Overall, that is what I’m trying to do: to poke fun at history, myths, even writing itself. Specifically, I try to imbibe the (uber-omniscient) narrator with a kind of pointed cheekiness, a knowing but playful irreverence for otherwise sober themes like religion, female agency, and Greek and Roman myths. For example, when the narrator is telling his son about the similarity, even continuity between religions, he uses a paternalistic tone telling him that, despite all this, his religion is correct, saying “For now, you just have faith in your Father.” He realistically wouldn’t have known about Christian traditions that use Our Father as a name for God; however, in shutting off the conversation in that way (a manner reminiscent of Church teaching to just have faith in Jesus), the narrator gives readers a peek into his uber-omniscience (because he doesn’t just transcend characters in the story, he transcends time) and reveals larger themes I’m trying to incorporate into the story and my writing like the conscious anachronisms, the narrator’s overall wise, playful, and apathetic demeanor, and the melding of religion, history, and mythology, fact and fiction (and everything in between).