Author

Homer(c. 8th century BCE)

Homer is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1839–1850). 10 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement: ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented: 1839–1850

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

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 →

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Homer’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

undatedWork not namedAttested
“at other times, read all of Homer, Juvenal, Ovid, Anacreon and other books including almost all of Plato and many of the Greek dramas”
Recollections of Richard F. Fuller, Chapters Four-Six
Explicit first-person statement: 'read all of Homer, Juvenal, Ovid, Anacreon and other books'.

In Fuller’s words

“The scene in which he appears, accompanied by his wife?who seems to have gone hand in hand with him in this matter?lays down all his best things in a heap, in the middle of the hall, as a ransom for the captive, and his little, quiet speech, are as good as the Iliad. They have the same simplicity, the same lively force and tenderness.”

Iliad · Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 · 1843

When Fuller engaged with Homer

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist4records

V. New York13records

VI. Europe10records

✦. Memoirs (1852)2records

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Homer in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1839—

Letter to Elizabeth Hoar

p66

read

“I feel near a faithful breast, yet gently put back by an irresistible power. I am like Ulysses near the loved shades.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Ulysses in comparing her own emotional longing to the hero's experience in Odyssey Book XI (the Nekyia), where Odysseus encounters the shades of the dead and repeatedly tries to embrace his mother Anticleia, only to have her slip through his arms like a shadow—an image that echoes Fuller's own sense of being near a loved one yet gently repelled by an irresistible force.

1840—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p179

mentioned

“She seemed to loose the record of past summer hours from her permanent life as lightly as spontaneously as the great genius casts behind him a literature, the Odyssey he has outgrown.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

1841—

Letter to Henry D. Thoreau

p243

read

“Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller advises Thoreau to 'Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.' The lotus is a clear allusion to the Lotus-Eaters episode of Homer's Odyssey, Book 9 (ll. 82–104), in which Odysseus's men eat the honey-sweet lotus and lose all desire to return home, falling into blissful forgetfulness.

1842—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p80

read

“his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

analyzed · read4 selected passages

“They cannot reef and brace other than in a Homeric dialect”

Inferred Homeric dialect' is a direct allusion to Homer's elevated and precise epic diction.

“which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike that of Rhesus, had he but been as suitably furnished with chariot and steeds!”

Inferred Fuller names 'Rhesus' as a figure of a dashing charioteer without citing a textual source; the reference draws on Iliad Book 10 and/or Euripides' tragedy Rhesus. Rhesus was a mythological king of Thrace and ally of Troy in the Iliad (Book 10), famous for his magnificent white horses and golden armor.

The allusion is to the classical tradition, principally Homer's Iliad 10.435-514 or the tragedy Rhesus attributed to Euripides.

“Here I thought of, or rather saw, what the Greek expresses under the form of Jove's darling, Ganymede, and the following stanzas took form.”

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Ganymede as the Greek mythological figure inspiring her poem 'Ganymede to His Eagle.' She identifies him as 'Jove's darling.' The myth appears first in Homer's Iliad and was also extensively in Pindar, Virgil, and other classical authors.

“The scene in which he appears, accompanied by his wife?who seems to have gone hand in hand with him in this matter?lays down all his best things in a heap, in the middle of the hall, as a ransom for the captive, and his little, quiet speech, are as good as the Iliad.”

Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.

1845—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Alfieri and Cellini” · 1845

quoted · read2 selected passages

“This sort of man is the modern Achilles, "the tamer of horses.”

Inferred The source is inferred from the quoted phrase; it is uncertain whether Fuller is quoting Homer precisely or using a proverbial Homeric tag.

“the white root, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus, shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men.”

Inferred Fuller develops an extended allegory from Odyssey Book X, in which Odysseus receives the magical herb moly (white root, black below) from Hermes to protect him from Circe's enchantment. Fuller calls it "the white root, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus," adapting the Homeric narrative to a political allegory about principled individuals restoring the nation.

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

source lines 2506–2513

analyzed · read2 selected passages

“Let Ulysses drive the beeves home while Penelope there piles up the fragrant loaves — they are both well employed if these be done in thought and love, willingly.”

Inferred Fuller alludes to Homer's Odyssey through the figures of Ulysses (Odysseus) and Penelope.

“The Andromache here is just as lovely as that of the Iliad. To her child whom they are about to murder, the same that was frightened at the "glittering plume.”

Inferred Iliad referenced via Andromache and the 'glittering plume' scene; Hector and Achilles compared. Named explicitly as 'the Iliad.' The 'glittering plume' is from Iliad Book 6 (Andromache-Hector farewell scene, where baby Astyanax is frightened by Hector's helmet).

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

1845—

Fourth of July.

“Fourth of July.”

mentioned

“He may there find the needed remedy which, like the white root, the Moly, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus, shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Fourth of July." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 July 1845. · 4 July 1845

1845—

Festus: A Poem . . .

“Festus: A Poem . . .”

quoted · read

“Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where The rival cities seven? His song outlives, Time, tower, and god—all that then was save heaven.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Festus: A Poem . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 8 September 1845. · 8 September 1845

1845—

Italy.

“Italy.”

mentioned

“In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy; must you give him Plato because it is harder?”

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

1845—

Review.

“Review.”

mentioned2 selected passages

“They like the “Arabian Nights,” and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Bunyan’s Emblems,” and Shakspeare, and the “Iliad” and “Odyssey;”

“but—the “Spectator,” “Telemachus,” “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature” and the “Iliad.” Forms of gods and heroes more distinctly seen”

Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 5 February 1845.

1845—

Thom’s Poems.

“Thom’s Poems.”

mentioned

“Those who demand this will be content only with the Iliads and Odysseys of the mind’s endeavor.—They can feed no where but at rich men’s tables”

Fuller, Margaret. "Thom’s Poems." New-York Daily Tribune, 22 August 1845. · 22 August 1845

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p279

analyzed · read2 selected passages

“Margaret was struck with the singular fineness of his perceptions...”

Inferred This passage refers to Margaret Fuller's engagement with the works of Homer, as noted by Emerson. Fuller's appreciation is characterized by her "singular fineness of perceptions," and she celebrated the proud reception of Homer and Aeschylus, along with other esteemed authors, on an almost equal footing.

“One of his themes has long been my favorite, — the last expedition of Ulysses, — and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad.”

Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Homer's Odyssey, here distinguishing Ulysses' "deep romance of wisdom" from his portrayal in the Iliad. Fuller states this theme has "long been my favorite," suggesting a well-established familiarity and recurring interest in the epic's narrative.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.