Since Mentor, Telemachus's advisor in Homer's Odyssey, gave name to
the figure of the "wise teacher," fictional representations of mentoring
have permeated different classic and contemporary cultural texts of
different literary genres such as fiction, poetry, and life writing. The
contributions of this volume analyze this narrative of mentorship that
offers a mirror and also a narrative practice through which ageist views
of later life (and also of youth) may be undermined, while it at the
same time enables a study of questions relevant to wisdom in old age.