WorkFrançois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon

Les Aventures de Télémaque [The Adventures of Telemachus]

François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651–1715) · 1699

InferredFuller compares learning from Wordsworth's poems to learning from 'the Telemachus of Fenelon' — this names Fénelon's didactic novel Télémaque. Télémaque used as analogy for the edifying quality of Wordsworth's poetry.

ReadMentioned

Documented 1840–1846

Letters • Books

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe1record

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1840—

Letter to Arthur B. Fuller

p196

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“But I will not play Mentor much, lest I make you averse to write to your very affte sister MARGARET.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller's phrase 'play Mentor' is a standard literary allusion to the character Mentor in Homer's Odyssey — Odysseus's old friend who serves as adviser to Telemachus, and through whom Athena acts. The noun 'mentor' had become a generic word for a trusted adviser or guide by the early 19th century, but Fuller's phrasing 'play Mentor' invokes the literary character.

1846—

Papers on Literature and Art

p95

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“As was she taught through the Telemachus of Fenelon, so was she taught the secrets of the universe from Wordsworth's poems.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.

Inferred Fuller compares learning from Wordsworth's poems to learning from 'the Telemachus of Fenelon' — this names Fénelon's didactic novel Télémaque. Télémaque used as analogy for the edifying quality of Wordsworth's poetry.