Telamon

Author: (French) Fénelon
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-07-01
Features: Fénelon's Telemachus (1699) is, alongside Bossuet's Politics, the most important work of political theory of the grands siècle in France. It was also the most widely read work of its time, influencing Montesquieu and Rousseau in its attempt to combine monarchy with republican virtues. Fénelon tells of the moral and political education of Telemachus, the young son of Ulysses, by his tutor Mentor (the goddess Minerva in disguise). Telemachus visits every corner of the Mediterranean world and learns patience, courage, modesty, and simplicity, the qualities he will need when he succeeds Ulysses, asking of Ithaca, "It is the story of the transformation of an egoistic young man into a model ruler, and is meant (among other things) as a commentary on the bellicosity and luxuriousness of Louis XIV." Patrick Riley is the Oakeshott Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the editor of Leibniz: Political Writings and Bossuet: Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought.