Télémaque (tā-lā-mȧk´), Les Aventures de: “Adventures of Telemachus”.—A romance by Fenelon, published in 1699. It is founded on the legendary history of Telemachus, and is one of the classics of French literature. Though the beautiful fiction of Telemachus, which has much in common with, and was doubtless suggested to Fenelon by the Argenis, be rather an epic poem in prose than a romance, it seems to have led the way to several political romances, or, at least, to have nourished a state for this species of composition.
Tell, William.—Title of a drama by Schiller. The hero is chief of the confederates of the forest cantons of Switzerland, and son-in-law of Walter Fürst. Having refused to salute the Austrian cap which Gessler, the Austrian governor, had set up in the market-place of Altdorf, he was condemned to shoot an apple from the head of his own son. He succeeded in this perilous task, but, letting fall a concealed arrow, was asked by Gessler with what object he had secreted it. “To kill thee, tyrant,” he replied, “if I had failed.” The governor now ordered him to be carried in chains across the Lake Lucerne to Küssnacht Castle, “there to be devoured alive by reptiles”; but, a violent storm having arisen on the lake, he was unchained, that he might take the helm. Gessler was on board; and, when the vessel neared the castle, Tell leaped ashore, gave the boat a push into the lake, and shot the governor. After this he liberated his country from the Austrian yoke.
Tempest, The.—One of Shakespeare’s fairy plays. The story runs: Prospero, duke of Milan, was dethroned by his brother Antonio, and left on the open sea with his three-year-old daughter Miranda, in “a rotten carcass of a boat.” In this they were carried to an enchanted island, uninhabited except by a hideous creature, Caliban, the son of a witch. Prospero was a powerful enchanter, and soon had not only Caliban, but all the spirits of the region under his control, including Ariel, chief of the spirits of the air. Years afterward Antonio, Alfonso, Sebastian and other friends of the usurper came near the island. Prospero, by his magic, raises a storm which casts their ship on the shore and the whole party are spellbound and brought to Prospero. Plots and counterplots follow, bringing in Caliban and clowns; but all are made ridiculous and are defeated by Prospero and Ariel.
Tessa (tes´ä).—In George Eliot’s novel of Romola is the peasant girl who is deceived into marriage with Tito Melema.
Thangbrand.—Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry W. Longfellow. King Olaf’s drunken priest, “short of stature, large of limb,” who was sent to Iceland, found the people poring over their books, and sailed backed to Norway to say to Olaf “little hope is there of these Iceland men.”
Theagenes (thē-aj´e-nēz) and Chariclea (kar-i-klē´ä).—The chief characters in a Greek love story, by Heliodorus, bishop of Trikka, fourth century. A charming fiction, largely borrowed from by subsequent novelists, and especially by Mdlle. de Scudéri, Tasso, Guarini, and D’Urfé.
Thekla.—The daughter of Wallenstein in Schiller’s drama of this name. She is an invention of the poet.
Theodorus.—The name of a physician, in Rabelais’ romance of Gargantua. At the request of Ponocrates, Gargantua’s tutor, he undertook to cure the latter of his vicious manner of living, and accordingly “purged him canonically with Anticyrian hellebore,” by which medicine he cleared out all the perverse habits of his brain, so that he became a man of honor, sense, courage, and piety.
Theresa, or Teresa (te-rē´sä, or tā-rā´sä).—Daughter of the count palatine of Padolia, beloved by Mazeppa, in Byron’s Mazeppa.