"Emblem of an ambivalent century vis-à-vis the arts of representation, iconolatrous as much as iconophobic, Fénelon testifies in his work of a complex of the visible. In him, dialogue in tension the most reticences grades and the strategic interest even the deep taste for the image. The studies gathered here probe and compare the various parts of a diverse body of work that assembles fictions, pedagogical and aesthetic essays, and of course spiritual prose. This scan allows a great plurality of approaches that capture the nuances and even the paradox of the issues and the bases of thought, a belief and a sensitivity both worried and passionate about the power of the image. Partly, Fénelon puts in suspicion, possibly refuses the images, judged risky because seductrices deceptive, illusory (the pure quietist love is fundamentally without vision). But he also knows how to be able to do without the regime of the image, concrete and mental, to touch and to persuade the men to whom he addresses himself and that the senses render incapable to rise spontaneously to the abstraction of the ideas or the faith." --Translated from back cover