Folklore & Mythology Book
Documented in Fuller’s letters, books, notebooks, manuscripts, memoirs
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
“I am half through the fifth book of Virgil In my last lesson I got the whole of the fourth book and Uncle Elisha said I got it extremely well”
Inferred Hudspeth identified Book 5 depicts Aeneas driven to Sicily, where he institutes funeral games for Anchises.
“I have got through Virgil and I shall go into Cicero as soon as I go to school.”
Inferred This culminates the Aeneid study documented in her previous letters, as Hudspeth identified.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“I have still a great partiality for the goddess who vires acquirit eundo parva metu prima; mox sese attollit in auras, et caput inter nubilia condit.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“The Latin poet, though used to a court, has faintly described what I saw and heard often, in going the length of a street.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Inferred Fuller alludes to "the Latin poet" in describing wild rumor and lamentation during the Dorr Rebellion in Providence. Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
Hudspeth identified this as Virgil's Aeneid, Book 4, specifically the passage describing rumor spreading after Dido's suicide.
“Whatever be called his function, he did the honors of the place so much in harmony with it, as to leave the guests free to imagine themselves in Elysium.”
Inferred Fuller names Elysium as a classical figure of bliss without citing a textual source; standard mythological background knowledge.
“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.
Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1844.
“floating on the cloud a starry banner with the inscription "Afflatur Numine.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846.
Inferred Banner inscription 'Afflatur Numine' adapts Aeneid VI.50: 'adflata est numine quando iam propiore dei' (she was breathed upon by the divinity with the god now nearer). Fuller adapts 'adflata est numine' (Aeneid VI.50, describing the Cumaean Sibyl) into the active present form 'Afflatur Numine' ('is breathed upon by the divine').
“I rejoiced that it lay not with me to cut down the trees, to destroy the Elysian gardens, for the defense of Rome”
L-2 [Letter 846, 28 August 1849, To William H. Channing]
“yearned to embrace her also, and ached when the shade refused to fill his longing arms.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller's phrase "the shade refused to fill his longing arms" alludes to one of the most celebrated passages in Virgil's Aeneid: the three failed embraces of a shade.
“as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could not get out”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Margaret Fuller's writings evoke a dreamscape reminiscent of Virgil's Aeneid, specifically recalling the passage where Aeneas encounters the bloody myrtle trees of Polydorus in Book III.
“Procul, O procul este profani.”
B-1-44 [Consecration of Grace Church] p343
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Possunt quia posse videntur”
Fuller, Margaret. "A Theme on Will and Destiny." Unbound Pages, undated. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“Man ignora mali._”
Fuller, Margaret. "On Pain." Unbound pages, undated. Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 93.
“none had said 'Quantum mutatus ab illo!”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook: Sir Thomas Browne." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (87); Box 6 (87).
The line is quoted by Browne within a passage Fuller transcribed.