Author
Alfieri is part of Fuller’s Italian literary curriculum — one of five poets she taught together in 1837 as the pillars of Italian literature. She also translated him, which meant she believed the works were worth that kind of attention. His three masterpieces — Saul, Myrrha, and Filippo — she analyzed in the Life Without and Life Within essays, with Myrrha as the peak: “Never was higher tragic power exhibited.” What draws her is less the plays than the life: Alfieri as a man of violent passions, relentless discipline, and absolute commitment.
The ebb to the flow of his life
“His works are only the ebb to the flow of his life” — a formulation that says as much about what Fuller thought literature was for as it does about Alfieri.
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Vittorio Alfieri’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“I learn lessons in Alfieri occasionally.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge. 22d Feb 1824.
Explicit first-person statement 'I learn lessons in Alfieri occasionally'.
“It includes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and an examination into the evidences of the Christian religion”
Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe · her time at Groton beginning spring of 1833
'A careful perusal of Alfieri's writings' explicitly claims reading, dated to her 1833 Groton period.
“I read parts of Tasso, Petrarch,—whom they came to almost adore,—Ariosto, Alfieri”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. Summer 1837]
Same explicit 'I read' sentence naming Alfieri.
1824–1838
Italian curriculum formation — Alfieri introduced early, and taught to the Italian class in 1837 alongside Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, and Ariosto.
1845
Essay analysis — sustained analysis of the three masterpieces, with the autobiography also discussed.
“His works are only the ebb to the flow of his life. Cellini was a statuary and carver in gems. I mentioned them both as being great and strong natures who swept away life with the force of the cataract.”
“Myrrha is, however, the highest exertion of his genius. [...] No! never was higher tragic power exhibited.”
“In “Saul,” a bright rainbow rises, by the aid of the Sun of Righteousness, above the commotion of the tempest. David, the faithful, the hopeful, contrasts finely with the unfortunate Saul.”
Translated by Fuller
Analyzed in depth
Further works
Further works documented in the catalogue
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“I learn lessons in Alfieri occasionally.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Hudspeth identified Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) as an Italian dramatist author of nineteen classical tragedies, sonnets, odes, and comedies.
“The works of Alfieri with his opinions on them_”
Also reprinted in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817-1838. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Letter to Amelia." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.
Inferred Fuller explicitly states she has been reading 'The works of Alfieri with his opinions on them' as part of a self-designed winter study course (alongside Goethe/Schiller and the history of modern Europe). Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), Italian dramatist, poet, and autobiographer.
“Alfieri was not faint-hearted; he had more to discourage him than I”
Fuller, Margaret. "Fragmentary Reading Notes and Autobiographical Reflections." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller names 'Alfieri' only without a specific work title; no character, quotation, or allusion points to a particular play.
“With the Italian class, I read parts of Tasso, Petrarch,—whom they came to almost adore,—Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of the Divina Commedia”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names Alfieri as part of her Italian class reading.
“The Memoirs of Alfieri or Benvenuto Cellini, or among fictions Lockhart's "Reginald Dalton" Hope's "Anastasius" or Beckford's "Caliph Vathek" are very good.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“You need not know the works of Alfieri to enjoy such a character. His works are only the ebb to the flow of his life. Cellini was a statuary and carver in gems.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names Alfieri explicitly, speaking with evident knowledge of multiple works and characterizing him analytically: "His works are only the ebb to the flow of his life." Her paired discussion with Cellini suggests familiarity with both Alfieri's literary works and his autobiography, the primary vehicle through which nineteenth-century readers knew him as a "character."
“On Alfieri. Aristrocratic democrat. High claims of autobiography on our attention.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
Inferred Fuller plans an essay 'On Alfieri' describing him as 'aristocratic democrat' and highlighting his 'High claims of autobiography on our attention.' Alfieri's Vita (autobiography, published posthumously 1804) is the most famous of his prose works and the primary text associated with his 'aristocratic democratic' character. Title inferred as the Vita since Fuller explicitly highlights the autobiographical genre.
“* The Autobiography of Alfieri, translated by C. E. Lester. [Fuller quotes Alfieri's 'fourth and last passion' passage at length; also mentions 'a friend of many years standing']”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p93
Fuller reviews this translation explicitly, naming it in a footnote.
“There is indeed, a higher Italian nature than this, such as is expressed in the works of Dante, and Alfieri, of Domenichino and the Caracci;”
Fuller, Margaret. "Italian Opera on Friday Night." New-York Daily Tribune, 13 January 1845. · 13 January 1845
“THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF ALFIERI. No. V. of the Medici Series of Italian Prose; Translated and Edited by C.E. LESTER. Paine & Burgess, 62 John-st.”
“My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by symptoms entirely different from the three first.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Italy." New-York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1845.
“Not only the tragedies of Alfieri and the Faust of Goethe, but the Divina Commedia of Dante... are turned into school books for little girls who have just left their hoops and dolls”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Italy." New-York Daily Tribune, 18 November 1845. · 18 November 1845
“Albert is the aristocratic democrat such as Alfieri was, one who in his keen perception of beauty shares the good of that culture”
Fuller, Margaret. "Jenny Lind . . . The Consuelo of George Sand." New-York Daily Tribune, 19 September 1845. · 19 September 1845
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“In a passionate love-struggle she wrestled thus with the genius of De Staël, of Rousseau, of Alfieri, of Petrarch.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Margaret Fuller's reading during her Cambridge years included the works of Vittorio Alfieri, whom she mentions alongside other influential writers such as Madame de Staël and Rousseau.