Fénelon in the Enlightenment: Traditions, Adaptations, and Variations

François Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai (1651–1715) exerted a considerable influence on the development and spread of the Enlightenment. His most famous work, the Homeric novel Les Aventures de Télémaque, Fils d’Ulysse (1699), composed for the education of his pupil Duc de Bourgogne, was, after the Bible, the most widely read literary work in France throughout the eighteenth century. It was also translated and adapted into many other European languages. And yet oddly enough,