Author
There are two Tassos in Fuller’s catalogue: the Italian poet (1544–1595) and Goethe’s play about him (1790), which Fuller translated. She first quoted the Gerusalemme Liberata in Italian in a letter of 1829 — two full stanzas of Canto XII, with a note: “I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression.” She was fifteen. She taught Tasso to her Italian class in 1837, read his own letters in 1841, and made a pilgrimage to his birthplace in Sorrento in 1847, where she saw an autograph letter in a private archive.
Torquato Tasso the poet (1544–1595)
Author of Gerusalemme Liberata and the Lettere. Fuller read, quoted, taught, and visited his birthplace — referenced in the catalogue from 1829 to 1849.
Goethe’s Torquato Tasso (1790)
A play about the poet by Goethe, translated by Fuller and published posthumously in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1859), ed. Arthur B. Fuller. It belongs to the Goethe page.
Emerson placed him in the innermost Italian circle: “Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets.”
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 Torquato Tasso’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“look to Fairfax, Gerusalemme? Lib. Canto 12 Stanza 77... 'Misero mostro d'infelice amore...' La Gerusalemme Liberata, C.XII.76,77.”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · December 17th 1829
Substantial quoted stanza passage from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
“Tasso,' says Rousseau, 'has predicted my misfortunes... look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · December 17, 1829
Substantial quoted material with a specific citation (Canto 12, Stanza 77) reflecting sustained textual engagement, though embedded within a Rousseau quotation rather than her own explicit reading statement.
“My translation of Tasso cannot be published at present, if it ever is.”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · March, 1834
Translated engagement type; explicit reference to 'My translation of Tasso.'
1829–1837
Italian curriculum — the Gerusalemme Liberata quoted in Italian at fifteen; taught to the Italian class in 1837 alongside Dante, Petrarch, Alfieri, and Ariosto.
1841–1849
Reading, translation, and pilgrimage — Tasso’s own letters read in 1841; Goethe’s Torquato Tasso translated; the Sorrento pilgrimage of 1847, with an autograph letter seen in a private archive.
“Tasso has this peculiarity, that you cannot take from his work a single strophe, nor from any strophe a single line, nor from any line a single word, without disarranging the whole poem.”
““The mind shows itself dull to think, the fancy sluggish to imagine, the senses heavy in ministering to the imagination...” From his letter to the duke d’Urbino.”
“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.”
Translated by Fuller
Read and analyzed (Tasso the poet)
Further works
Further works documented in the catalogue
Transcribed from originals at Houghton Library, Harvard, and the Boston Public Library. The manuscripts are not supplementary — they are the evidence.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“Tasso," says Rousseau "has predicted my misfortunes.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Entry December 1829." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.
“La Gerusalemme Liberata, C.XII.76,77. / 'Misero mostro d'infelice amore; / Misero mostro a cui sol pena e degna / Dell' immensa impieta, la vita indegna.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“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 Tasso as part of her Italian class syllabus, read alongside Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the Divina Commedia. Though no specific work is named, Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) was the standard Tasso text in literary education; Fuller's later translation of Goethe's Torquato Tasso confirms her strong engagement with the Italian poet.
“The mind shows itself dull to think, the fancy sluggish to imagine, the senses heavy in ministering to the imagination, the hand slow to write, the pen forgetful of its office, and all my faculties chilled, stunned, stupefied, and overwhelmed.' From his letter to the duke d'Urbino.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal November 1841." Houghton Library, Harvard University; MS Am 1086; Box 5.
The first is attributed to 'his letter to the duke d'Urbino' — Tasso (imprisoned 1579–1586 at Sant'Anna) wrote extensively to princes and patrons including the Duke of Urbino.
“yet the tears of later ages glitter as they fall on Tasso's prison bars.”
Inferred Fuller alludes to Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), the Italian Renaissance poet imprisoned (1579–1586) at the hospital of Sant'Anna in Ferrara by order of Duke Alfonso II d'Este.
“No one thinks of Michael Angelo's Persian Sibyl, or St. Theresa, or Tasso's Leonora, as an old maid”
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante?”
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
“The strictures on Tasso are even more offensive than those on Dante, because it seems as if they might do harm and grieve and disgust the poet if he knew them”
Fuller, Margaret. "Leigh Hunt’s Italian Poets." New-York Daily Tribune, 18 February 1846. · 18 February 1846
“He has even made use of extracts from his poems. Thus the greater part of what Tasso says about the golden age is taken from the beautiful chorus in the first act of Aminta.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p358; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“This half hour Tasso has been walking towards us; Yet still he dallies, seems irresolute, And cannot quite decide to come or go.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p370; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“For as Tasso To-day enriched me with a glorious conquest, That of Jerusalem, so long contested, Thou seest we have meetly honored him.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p378; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“And e'en Armida's faults are half redeemed By tenderness and beauty.”
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p387; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
“My Clorinda and Hermione Her unheeded but undying faith.”
“Olindo, His sorrow and Sophronia's magnanimity, Are not the children of my fancy.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
“Like Tasso, and other such fervid and sanguine persons, if he could at last be persuaded to use a remedy for any sickness, he always overdid the mitter.”
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.
“To Castella Mare and Sorrento. Tall orange groves of Sorrento, House of Tasso, beautiful places in which Tasso lived. Why he was always so unhappy.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1847–1849." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (94); Box 4.
Inferred Fuller visits the 'House of Tasso' in Sorrento, sees an autograph letter of his, and meditates on his character ('Why he was always so unhappy'). His principal and most celebrated work, Gerusalemme liberata (1581), is inferred as the most likely work in her literary knowledge of Tasso. Fuller names Tasso explicitly as a poet whose life and character she reflects on at his birthplace in Sorrento (c. March 1847).
“a fine Canatellé and a manuscript of Tasso. It fills the house once the residence of his body, still of his mind.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . IX." New-York Daily Tribune, 19 February 1847. · 19 February 1847
“their family archives of more than a hundred volumes, (containing most interesting documents about Poland, where four of their ancestors were nuncios,) manuscript letters from Tasso, and the like.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. V. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“parts of Tasso”
Inferred While no specific Tasso title is named, the archive infers her reading likely encompassed Gerusalemme liberata, the poet's most celebrated epic. Fuller's familiarity with Tasso is further suggested by her own documented efforts at translating his work.
“I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression. If not, look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77; [...] La Gerusalemme Liberata, c. xii.”
“Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, were her friends among the old poets”
Inferred Here, Tasso is implicitly referenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lists him among Margaret Fuller's "friends among the old poets." This mention, alongside Dante and Petrarch, suggests Fuller’s engagement with the Italian poetic tradition during her own critical work.
“Beethoven! Tasso! It is well to think of you! What sufferings from baseness, from coldness!”
Inferred Margaret Fuller invokes Torquato Tasso, the 16th-century Italian poet known for Gerusalemme Liberata, as a figure who endured significant personal suffering alongside his artistic endeavors. Alongside Beethoven, Tasso is presented as an exemplar whose genius transcended profound "sufferings from baseness, from coldness," highlighting the rare and often fleeting moments of joy experienced by such noble lives.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.