Myth, Modernism and Mentorship: Examining François Fénelon's Influence on James Joyce's “Ulysses”

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis will be to examine closely James Joyce’s Ulysses with respect to François Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus. Joyce considered The Adventures of Telemachus to be a source of inspiration for Ulysses, but little scholarship considers this. Joyce’s fixation on the role of teachers and mentor figures in Stephen’s growth and development, serving alternately as cautionary figures, models or adversaries, owes much to Fénelon’s framework for the growth of Telemachus. Close reading of both Joyce’s and Fénelon’s work will illuminate the significance of education and mentorship in Joyce’s construction of Stephen Dedalus. Leopold Bloom and Stephen’s relationship in Joyce’s Ulysses closely mirrors that of Mentor and Telemachus as seen in Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus. Through these numerous parallels, we will see that mentorship serves as a better model for Bloom and Stephen’s relationship in Ulysses than the more critically prevalent father-son model