ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on intertextuality–the way in which Morin’s instrumental interjections mirror, allude, and pay homage to the account of Ulysses’ arrival on Calypso’s island in the Odyssey. Among the vast Homeric reception in France, Francois de Salignac de La Mothe Fenelon’s Les Aventures de Telemaque represents the most significant and enduring example. Fenelon’s book intertwines the geographic, the narrative, and the intertextual dimensions of travel. At a time when the influence of Homer’s Odyssey had been declining in France, Fenelon’s novel played an important role in its revitalization, rekindling a fascination with epic not only in literature and theatre, but also in French operas and cantatas of the early eighteenth century. Inspired by a text full of suggestive descriptions, the visually evocative quality of Charles-Hubert Gervais’s instrumental music recalls Fenelon’s reliance on extensive ekphrases, which lend a pictorial quality to his prose.
