Author
Hesiod is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, and manuscripts (1838–1846). One work is named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
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 →
“I know the Titanic era must come ere long, but, oh Cary, do nothing to hasten it. Ward it off as long as possible by occupation. Give yourself time to ripen and strengthen for that tremendous strife. They never entered Olympus, those Titans, rather chained to earth, they vented their smouldering rage in volcanoes, 'at which Jove laughs”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“The Titans are the lower passions— They dared to attempt to scale with ladders those serene heights where dwell the gods.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller invokes the Titans as a mythological reference to represent "the lower passions," describing their failed attempt to scale the heights where the gods dwell.
“I know the Titanic era must come ere long, but, oh Cary, do nothing to hasten it. Ward it off as long as possible by occupation.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller alludes to the Titanomachy through the Titans' failed assault on Olympus, invoking the classical mythological tradition found in Hesiod's Theogony.
“Motto from Hesiod_”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).
Inferred Fuller mentions 'Motto from Hesiod' for her planned poem 'The Pilgrimages of Lila' but does not name a specific Hesiodic work; the most likely source for a motto concerning nature, art, and cosmic elements is Theogony or Works and Days.
“_J_. Nay, I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the sounding shell”
Inferred Standard classical mythological allusions to Triton the sea-god,
“From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.”
Inferred Standard classical mythological allusion to the birth of Aphrodite/Venus from sea foam.
“Remember that I am not yet divine, / Long years of service to the fatal Nine / Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine.”
Inferred Fuller invokes the nine Muses of Greek tradition as 'the fatal Nine' in her poem 'Ganymede to His Eagle'.The phrase 'the fatal Nine' is the traditional designation for the nine Muses of Greek mythology (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, Urania), presided over by Apollo at Delphi.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
“as Hesiod is represented at the feet of the Muse in Flaxman’s divine work.”
Fuller, Margaret. "The Grand Concert." New-York Daily Tribune, 20 May 1846. · 20 May 1846
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“I have just been reading the Odyssey and am about to take up Hesiod”
Fuller, Margaret. "Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth." Houghton Library, Harvard University.