The erotic nature of mentorship has long been acknowledged by creative and critical writers alike. Scholars who use the term ‘erotic’ hasten to distinguish between its original meaning, derived from the Latin root ‘Eros’, which refers to romantic love, and the narrow sexual connotations of its modern usage. For C. S. Lewis, Eros denotes the state of ‘being in love’, within which sexuality (which he terms ‘Venus’) may or may not operate as a part. He describes its profoundly inspiring effect on, and even transformative potential in, the life of an individual: an idea developed further by Robert Polhemus in his book Erotic Faith. Polhemus uses the word ‘erotic’ to indicate a ‘broadly libidinous desire and a passionate, sometimes romantic, relationship with, affection for, or attachment to another person’, in which one may find ‘meaning, value, hope, and even the possibility of transcendence’. He argues that this force, which is ultimately religious in nature, supplanted the remote supernaturalism of organized religion with a new kind of erotic faith, invested in tangible, personal relationships, during the course of the eighteenth century. He traces the centralization process of this erotic faith in the rise of the novel, the narratives of which relate the ‘history of characters who find vocation, meaning, fate, and even salvation in being in love’. These are the same sorts of transformations that occur through fictional and personal mentoring relationships of the period.