A pedagogical story which Fénelon wrote c.1695 for the duc de Bourgogne and described as ‘a fable narrated in the form of a heroic poem’, though in prose. It is an imaginary continuation of Book IV of the Odyssey, where Telemachus learns that his father Ulysses is detained on Calypso's isle. He reappears only in Book XV; Fénelon supplies the missing adventures. Accompanied by Mentor, Télémaque is ship-wrecked on the isle, tells Calypso of his travels, and falls in love with the nymph Eucharis (Books 1-7). Mentor rescues him from this entanglement and they are carried to Salente, which Mentor reorganizes as an ideal city-state (Books 8-11), while Télémaque is sent on various missions, including a descent to Hades (Books 12-17), before they rejoin Ulysses at Ithaca.
When an unauthorized version circulated in 1699, the Salente episode was seized upon as a roman à clefs highly critical of Louis XIV. It contributed both to Fénelon's disgrace and to his posthumous reputation as a precursor of the Enlightenment. Télémaque was the book most frequently reprinted in the 18th c., and for two centuries the invariable prescribed text for students of French.
[Peter Bayley]
