While, then, no word about contemporary situations is ever uttered in The Adventures of Telemachus, Fénelon still pays a heavy price for having his characters comment on realities that touch the nerve of 18th-century France. For a classicist this is very interesting, for Fénelon’s book eloquently dramatizes the ability of classical literature to make itself unendingly fresh, provocative –even annoying– and always relevant. In this light, I would like to examine very briefly two questions pertaining to the novel:
1. How are Fénelon’s intentions served by the choice of Telemachus as the main character in his novel?
2. Why did the author include a katabasis?
Let us begin with the first question. Telemachus is chosen because he corresponds in certain ways with the Duc de Bourgogne, the intended recipient of the novel. Thus the lessons Telemachus receives during his wanderings become an opportunity for the education of the young French prince as well. From a literary point of view, the very structure of Homer’s Odyssey offers Fénelon a window for narrative possibilities: Telemachus appears in the first books of the poem living among the suitors, and, at the instigation of the goddess Athena, visits Pylos and Sparta to get information about his father. But in Book Five he disappears from the narrative and reappears ten books later, when he is reunited with Odysseus. During his long absence, Homer focuses on Odysseus: his past adventures, his return to Ithaca, and his forthcoming repossession of the throne. Of Telemachus we know only that during this time he is a guest in Sparta, until spurred on by Athena to return home and protect his rights. Fénelon uses this blank period to insert his own story. Actually the title of the first (anonymous) edition of 1699 was: Sequel to the Fourth Book of the Odyssey, or The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses.7 Contrary to Homer’s inactive Telemachus, the French author creates a hero whose adventures take him all over the Mediterranean and beyond, leading him to maturity and a sense of purpose. This hero in the making is, of course, a young man and a prince. He is in Homer a relatively minor character overshadowed by a very great one, just as the young duke was eclipsed by the magnificence of his grandfather, the Sun King. And of course, Telemachus is the example par excellence of the movement from adolescence to manhood, and from helplessness to self-confidence and self-reliance; as such he renders himself suitable for imitation by the future king of France.
Telemachus, then, is deemed to be the proper model because he is in his formative years, and he is an heir to the throne, but also because he is the son of Ulysses, after whom Telemachus is modeled.8 In his Dialogues on Eloquence Fénelon writes: “The Odyssey contains, on all sides, a thousand moral instructions for all situations of life; one has only to read it to see that the painter has only painted a wise man …in order to teach posterity those fruits that one must expect from piety, prudence, and good morals.”9 And since the adventures of Telemachus are a reflection of those of his father, the reader, especially the young one, should also expect to benefit and improve morally.
But Telemachus is not only the son of Ulysses: most importantly, he is under the guidance of Mentor, who is none other than the goddess of wisdom, Minerva, as his transformation reveals at the very end of the book: Telemachus’ intimate instructor throughout the book disappears by rising into the air, enveloped in divine glory (s’ enveloppa d’un nuage d’or et d’azur)10, when he himself, mature and wise at last, reaches Ithaca. Perhaps Fénelon sees himself as Mentor, and his advice will be recognized by the duke, once mature, as divine wisdom itself, the best Christian advice disguised in classical garb.
7 Davis (above), p.29; see also p. 90 ff. for structural parallels and influences from other ancient authors.
8 Cf. Riley (above), pp. xxviii-xxix.
9 Ibid., p. xxix.
10 Cahen (above), p. 556.
