Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)(1304–1374)

Petrarch is part of Fuller’s Italian inner circle — read, taught, and returned to across fifteen years. She taught him to her Italian class alongside Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, and Alfieri in 1837. In 1840 she was planning a prose work that would interweave his love poems with an account of his relationship to Laura: “I should interweave the best passages from Petrarch’s poems, beside giving my own view of his relations.” Her most penetrating Petrarch judgment is also her most honest: “both Dante and Petrarch, though they truly loved, did not keep themselves sacred to the celestial Venus, but turned aside in hours of weakness to a lower love.”

An unwritten prose work

In 1840 Fuller planned a creative work built around Petrarch’s love poems and his relation to Laura. She never wrote it.

Her friends among the old poets

Emerson’s formulation is the best summary of this cluster: “Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets.”

Engagement
TranslatedExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Translated
  • Three sonnets written after the death of Laura — translated for the Klopstock and Meta essay
Present in
Letters · Books · Essays · Journals · Notebooks · Manuscripts
Documented
1831–1849

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 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

  • Dated
  • 1836Work not namedAttested

    “I read parts of Tasso, Petrarch,—whom they came to almost adore,—Ariosto, Alfieri”

    Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · [ca. Summer 1837]

    MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re172 (Mem-4 Margaret Fuller by Julia Ward Howe, p.63; tier C; same passage); re173 (Mem-3 Reminiscences of Edna Cheney, p.202; tier C; same passage) — counted once here. Same explicit 'I read' sentence naming Petrarch.

Phases of engagement

  1. 1831–1837

    Early reading and teaching — Petrarch in the Italian curriculum by 1831, and taught to the Italian class in 1837, who “came to almost adore” him.

  2. 1840–1847

    Critical and creative engagement — a planned prose work centered on Petrarch and Laura (1840, never written); three sonnets translated and used in the Life Without and Life Within essay; a critical assessment of his fidelity to the “celestial Venus.”

In Fuller’s words

“I have added three sonnets of Petrarca, all written after the death of Laura... The last lines of the last sonnet are a fit motto for Boccaccio’s dream.”
Journal, as later reported in the Memoirs · 1844 — sonnets after Laura’s death
“I should interweave the best passages from Petrarch’s poems, beside giving my own view of his relations.”
Manuscript notebook · 1840 — Il Canzoniere
“Both Dante and Petrarch, though they truly loved, did not keep themselves sacred to the celestial Venus, but turned aside in hours of weakness to a lower love.”
Letter · 1845 — critical assessment

When Fuller engaged with Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)

I. Childhood
II. Adolescence1record
III. Self-Directed
IV. Transcendentalist7records
V. New York6records
VI. Europe5records
✦. Memoirs (1852)2records
1810
1820
1832
1836
1844
1846
1850

(Petrarca in Fuller’s reading world

Translated by Fuller

  • Three sonnets after the death of Laura, included in the Klopstock and Meta essay

Analyzed in depth

  • Il Canzoniere [Rerum vulgarium fragmenta] — the love poems as a whole·
  • Canzone 366: “Vergine bella”

Further works

  • The prose works — inferred engagement

Further works documented in the catalogue

Documentary evidence

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

1831—

Letter to James F. Clarke

p181
read
“yours, though decidedly inferior to Petrarch, quite equal to S. T. Coleridge's”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Inferred Fuller invokes Petrarch as the supreme standard of sonnet excellence when judging Clarke's sonnet as "decidedly inferior to Petrarch"; though no specific Petrarch work is named, the spontaneous and confident comparison implies she is reading or has recently read him.

1836—

Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837

p194
excerpted · readManuscript page
“Tu sai ben che 'n altrui non ho speranza]”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Bouquet, 1836–1837." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (43); Box 6 (43).

Transcribed [not in SMF hand?] and labeled 'Petrarch Sonnet 86.' The sonnet 'I' vo piangendo i miei passati tempi' is Petrarch's Canzoniere No. CCCLXV (365), the penultimate poem of the collection and last sonnet, in which Petrarch laments wasted years spent in mortal love rather than aspiring to God.

1837—

Letter to Unknown

p278
analyzed · read
“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 notes that her students came to "almost adore" Petrarch, indicating they read his poetry in the Italian class. In this educational context, Petrarch's poetry means selections from the Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta), though no specific work is named.

1840—

Journal 1840

p9–p10
analyzed · readManuscript page
“The other is letters from Petrarch to some woman.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1840." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (85); Box 5 (85).

1841—

The Dial

“Klopstock and Meta” · Vol. I, No. 3, January 1841, January 1841 · pp. 309?313
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“Art thou not," I replied, "the love of Petrarch?”

Inferred Petrarch is named explicitly, and his muse, Laura, appears as a character in Fuller's vision.

“Men do not offer him the care of embassies, as an earlier age did to Petrarca; they would be surprised if he left his study to go forth to battle like Cervantes.”

Inferred Fuller here refers to Petrarch ("Petrarca") as an historical example of a poet entrusted with diplomatic missions. Petrarch was, indeed, engaged as an ambassador by the Visconti. Fuller's reading of Petrarch is confirmed elsewhere in her records (letter XLV).

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

1841—

Reading Notes, 1841

p17
mentioned
“Philo-Judaeus, Swedenborg, Origen, Fenelon, Boethius, Madame Guyon, Mirandola, Dante, Petrarca, More, Cudworth, Norris.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notes, 1841." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1221 (Caroline Sturgis Tappan papers, 1838–1921).

1843—

Letter to Elizabeth Hoar

p114
analyzed · read
“She is reading Petrarch with me: she feels very truly the beauty and dignity of his nature.”

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

Inferred Fuller records that "She [Anna Ward] is reading Petrarch with me,"

1844—

Letter to William H. Channing

p258
analyzed · quoted · read
“drittissimo calle, I seek said Petrarch but the spiral is the highest form of human ascent.”

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

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p158
analyzed · read
“both Dante and Petrarch, though they truly loved, did not keep themselves sacred to the celestial Venus, but turned aside in hours of weakness to a lower love.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

p45
excerpted · quoted · read2 selected passages
“the assumption of the Virgin, as painted by sublime artists, Petrarch's Hymn to the Madonna, cannot have spoken to the world wholly without result”

Inferred Named explicitly as 'Petrarch's Hymn to the Madonna'; this is Canzone 366, 'Vergine bella'. Fuller explicitly names 'Petrarch's Hymn to the Madonna' — the final canzone of the Canzoniere, 'Vergine bella, che di sol vestita,' which appears in full in Appendix B.

“LODI E PREGHIERE A MARIA. / Vergine bella che di sol vestita, / Coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole / Piacesti si...”

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

1845—

Papers on Literature and Art

p26
read
“Found in Petrarch's sonnets”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.

Inferred Named in Barrett's 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' (quoted by Fuller). 'Petrarch's sonnets' specifies the Canzoniere.

1845—

Ole Bull.

“Ole Bull.”
mentioned
“In the case of such geniuses as Petrarch and Spenser, it requires an unspoiled nature, unspoiled by vice or the pedantry”

Fuller, Margaret. "Ole Bull." New-York Daily Tribune, 1 October 1845. · 1 October 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

p145
excerpted · analyzed · read5 selected passages
“I rested, and read Petrarch for a day or two.”

Inferred While Margaret Fuller does not name a specific work by Francesco Petrarca, her correspondence indicates she engaged with his writings as a form of literary rest and intellectual renewal.

“Petrarch,—whom they came to almost adore”

Inferred This archive entry identifies Margaret Fuller's engagement with the works of Petrarch, inferring Francesco Petrarca's Canzoniere based on a class reading where students "came to almost adore" the poet.

“she was well read in French, Italian, and German Literature... she was... a dear student of Dante and Petrarca”

Inferred Emerson identifies her as "a dear student" of the Italian poet, indicating a significant level of familiarity and study with his oeuvre.

“Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets”

Inferred In this passage, Margaret Fuller is presented alongside Dante and Tasso as among "the old poets" whom she considered friends, directly identifying her engagement with the works of Francesco Petrarca.

“I have added three sonnets of Petrarca, all written after the death of Laura. They are among his noblest, all pertinent to the subject, and giving three aspects of that one mood.”

Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Francesco Petrarca's Canzoniere, selecting three sonnets composed after the death of Laura, which she deems "among his noblest." Fuller's analysis highlights Petrarch's spiritual evolution, noting how his muse "puts on celestial plumage" only after Laura's passing, suggesting her editorial choice to identify the work with the in morte di Madonna Laura section.

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

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