Author
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, journals, and manuscripts (1839–1849). 4 distinct works are named, most often in Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . X., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “translated”.
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 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Moliere were the friends of her childhood”
Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney · were the friends of her childhood
Same specific childhood-period claim regarding Moliere from the Cheney memoir.
“That part of the public, which in all ages, walks in clogs on the green-sward, and prefers a candle to the sun, which accused Socrates of impiety, denounced the Tartuffe of Moliere as irreligious, which furnishes largely the Oxford press in England, and rings its little alarm bell among ourselves at every profound and universal statement of religious experience, was exceedingly distressed, that Handel should profane the details of biblical history by wedding them to his God-given harmonies.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“you do not study human nature with the loving eye of a Scott, a Shakspeare, a Cervantes, a Moliere, a Goethe, a Raphael, a Mozart”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller names Molière as a master of humane characterization alongside Scott, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, Raphael, and Mozart, though she cites no specific work.
“From the time of Moliere, himself an agonized sufferer behind his comic mask from the infidelities of a wife he was not able to cease to love”
Fuller, Margaret. "Courrier des Etats-Unis—“Our Protegee,” Queen Victoria." New-York Daily Tribune, 4 August 1845. · 4 August 1845
“Give us comedy like that of Cervantes and Molière, where the men, with all their oddities and follies, were really men”
Fuller, Margaret. "Wiley & Putnam’s Library . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 12 May 1845. · 12 May 1845
“That part of the public, which in all ages, walks in clogs on the green-sward, and prefers a candle to the sun, which accused Socrates of impiety, denounced the Tartuffe of Moliere as irreligious, which furnishes largely the Oxford press in England, and rings its little alarm bell among ourselves at every profound and universal statement of religious experience, was exceedingly distressed, that Handel should profane the details of biblical history by wedding them to his God-given harmonies.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p242
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p242; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“Why is it then that to the profession, which numbers in its ranks Shakspeare and Moliere, which is dignified by such figures as oiddons, Talma, and Macready, respect is less willingly conceded than applause ?”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p117
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p117; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“However, it was an imposing sight; there are men of real distinction now in the Academy, and Molière would have a fair chance if he were proposed to-day.”
“Among the audience I saw many ladies of fine expression and manner as well as one or two Precieuses Ridicules, a race which is never quite extinct.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . X." New-York Daily Tribune, 3 March 1847.
“The farce was as anti-ecclesiastical as the Tartuffe of Molière. and the audience laughingly echoed the ejaculations of the hypocrite "Pazienza" "O che mondo! che mondo" "O che secolo”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1847–1849." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (94); Box 4.
“The “Tartuffe” of Moliere has been translated into Italian, and was last night performed with great applause at the Valle.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . XXX." New-York Daily Tribune, 23 June 1849. · 23 June 1849
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“p7: 'Visit to the family La Roche. / Les Precieuses Ridicules.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes toward The Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“note here the boy of 9 reading Corneille's and Racine's dissertations on the drama and studying Moliere of his own accord”
Fuller, Margaret. "Plan for a Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“My third friend was MoLIEKE, one very much lower, both in range and depth, than the others, but, as far as lie goes, of the same character.”
Inferred In this passage, Margaret Fuller identifies Molière as the third of her three formative literary friends, placing him alongside Shakespeare and Cervantes in her childhood reading.
“while she knew Molière, and Rousseau, and any quantity of French letters, memoirs, and novels”
Inferred This entry acknowledges Margaret Fuller's familiarity with the works of Molière, as noted by Emerson. The precise Molière text Fuller encountered remains unspecified, leaving editors to infer her engagement with the author's broader body of dramatic works. Fuller's general acquaintance with "any quantity of French letters, memoirs, and novels" suggests her immersion in 18th-century French literature.
“I never read any life of Molière. Are the facts very interesting? You see clearly in his writing what he was... no nearer approach to misanthropy than his Alceste.”
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Molière's celebrated play Le Misanthrope (1666) by commenting on its titular character, Alceste, and its creator.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.