16 h 58 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does it take to lead others wisely when you are still searching for your father?
In The Adventures of Telemachus, the search for a father meets the question of how to live well. François Fénelon brings adventure and myth together in an epic where wisdom, virtue, and leadership matter as much as the search itself.
Telemachus gives this exploration of just rule a personal center: a son seeking his father. Alongside that search, Fénelon asks readers to consider what makes a worthy leader. The book invites you to think about the link between living with virtue and governing with wisdom.
What you’ll discover
- A son's search Follow Telemachus on a quest for his father that gives the epic its human heart.
- Wisdom and adventure Explore a classic that brings the search for wisdom into the world of myth.
- The meaning of leadership Consider what it means to lead well, with virtue as a guide.
- Questions of just rule Reflect on the connection between a leader's wisdom and the demands of just government.
- Virtue in focus Look beyond the quest itself to the book's questions about how to live.
Who will love it
Readers who love Homeric journeys and mythic adventure, and anyone curious how good rulers are made. If you enjoy tales of wise mentors, faraway cities and the testing of a young hero, this is yours.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A shipwreck brings Telemachus to Calypso
- Captured in Sicily, then taken prisoner to Egypt
- Slavery teaches patience and the harm done by flattery
- Tyre shows a tyrant and a trading people
- Cyprus tests Telemachus with pleasure
- Crete's contest for a king
- Love and jealousy on Calypso's island
- A new city, a war and a school of government
- What the book is about and how it is told
Who’s who
- TelemachusSon of Ulysses, proud and impulsive, he searches the seas for his lost father and slowly learns to rule himself.
- MentorUlysses' old friend and Telemachus's guide, who is really the goddess Minerva in disguise, teaching him wisdom.
- CalypsoA goddess who mourns Ulysses and tries to keep his son with her by offering him immortality.
- IdomeneusExiled king of Crete who founds Salente and must learn from Mentor how to govern well.
- SesostrisThe just and curious king of Egypt, who loves his people and welcomes strangers.
- NarbalA Tyrian captain who befriends Telemachus and warns him against the cruel king Pygmalion.
- AdrastusThe treacherous king of the Daunians, who despises the gods and wants to enslave his neighbors.
- NestorThe aged Greek king of Pylos, a wise friend of Ulysses who helps lead the allied kings.
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- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 6 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Las aventuras de Telémaco in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Las aventuras de Telémaco
by François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon · 1699
Shipwrecked on a goddess's shore, Ulysses' son tells his tale while a stranger at his side guards his every step.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
A young prince washes up on a goddess's island with a stranger who guards him like a father. Can a boy learn to rule by losing everything?
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A shipwreck brings Telemachus to Calypso
The story opens on Calypso's island, where the goddess still mourns Ulysses, who has sailed away. A wreck throws two men onto her sand. One is young Telemachus, Ulysses' son, and the other is his old guide Mentor.
Calypso welcomes the boy warmly and asks him to tell his adventures. Mentor, who is really the goddess Minerva in disguise, warns Telemachus to distrust her sweet words and her fine gifts. Telemachus begins with his search for his father, which took him to Pylos and Sparta and then, against Mentor's advice, toward Sicily.
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What is The Adventures of Telemachus about?
It follows Ulysses' son as he searches for his father across the Mediterranean, guided by Mentor. Along the way he meets kings and tyrants, resists temptation, and learns how to rule justly.
Who is Mentor really?
Mentor is the goddess Minerva in disguise. She guides Telemachus as his wise old friend, and Calypso only gradually senses something divine in him, though the reader knows who he is from the start.
Is Telemachus a true story?
No. It is a prose epic that builds on Homer's Odyssey, with invented adventures. Fénelon wrote it in the 1690s to teach a young prince, and it was published in 1699.
The author
François Fénelon
1651–1715 · French archbishop, theologian and writer
François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) was a French theologian and writer. Born at the Château de Fénelon in southwestern France, he became archbishop of Cambrai in 1695 and died there. His works include On the Education of Girls (1687) and The Adventures of Telemachus (1699).
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