The demonic mentor figures of The Monk and The Confessions bear little resemblance to the Mentor who had struck such a resonant chord with Enlightenment sensibilities in Télémache a century prior. Following its translation into English, numerous adaptations had appeared in prose, verse and drama, making Télémache one of the most popular novels of the eighteenth century; Fénelon’s Mentor had captured the hearts and minds of a generation. In Mentor, the ideal paternal characteristics—competence, protection, security, authority without domination—were combined with Minerva’s ideal maternal qualities—nurturing, gentleness, devotion—to guide the formation of Telemachus’s independent identity. This combination of both parental functions was particularly appealing for a generation of readers who had moved away from the rural communities from whom they would have inherited an ‘automatic sense of identity’, organized around their familial role, to towns and cities, where these homogenous social structures broke down, and identity was to be formed by individuality, self-expression, and personal qualities. Mentor not only reinforced a stable social order, exacted conformity, affirmed cultural values, and modelled ethical behaviour, but also supported the formation of individual identity by attending to his protégé’s particular qualities in a reciprocal, mutually affectionate relationship.