Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Artemis (Diana)

Folklore & Mythology Figure

Documented in Fuller’s letters, books, manuscripts, memoirs

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

Related

Entities
Isis
Authors
Plutarch

Representative documentary evidence

1840—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p169
analyzed · read
“How finely it harmonizes with all legends of Isis, Diana, &c!”

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

Inferred Fuller mentions 'Isis, Diana, &c' by name in connection with the yucca flower's moonlight beauty — these are named mythological figures. The principal literary sources for the form Fuller would have known are Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (for Isis) and classical sources on Diana/Selene.

1840—

Defense of Anna

p2
readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)
“They do not think the Diana unnatural because her attitude is more free and noble than those they see every day.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Defense of Anna." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 90.

Inferred Fuller invokes 'Diana' as an image of noble, free, natural beauty — the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon, identified with the Greek Artemis.

1841—

L-2 [Letter 317, 6 August 1841, To William H. Channing]

quoted
“C. said "This is not Dian" and I replied "No, now we see the Hecate," and we exchanged no other word.”

L-2 [Letter 317, 6 August 1841, To William H. Channing]

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

read
“So full-orbed Cynthia walks the skies, / Filling the earth with melodies, / Even so she condescends to kiss / Drowsy Endymions, coarse and dull, / Or fills our waking souls with bliss, / Making long nights too beautiful.”

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

Inferred Based on allusion to Cynthia (epithet of Selene/Artemis as full moon) and Endymion: the myth of the moon goddess who fell in love with the sleeping shepherd-prince of Mount Latmus. Cynthia descends nightly to kiss the eternally sleeping Endymion.

1844—

B-3-04 Chapter IV

quoted
“Untouched Diana, flitting dim, / While sings the wood its evening hymn.”

B-3-04 Chapter IV

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p86
analyzed · read2 selected passages
“I wish you would ask me to explain the difference, the Greeks made between the moon as Hecate and as Diana, and the allusions to the girdle of Apollo, and at the conclusion — to Tantalus; these are beautiful things in the Greek mythology, which you will appreciate.”

Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.

“This was what I forgot to say to you, that the Greek thought about Hecate and Diana seemed to me the same that had risen in your mind about the volcanic nature of the moon and her pure white light.”

Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.

Fuller, Margaret. Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846. With an introduction by Julia Ward Howe. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

p40-41
analyzed · read
“In Greece, Ceres and Proserpine, significantly termed "the great goddesses," were seen seated, side by side...”

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

Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p137
analyzed · read
“Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the first conversations [...] He saw the oreads, naiads, nereids [...] Prometheus was made the type of Pure Reason; Jupiter, of Will; Juno, the passive side of the same, or Obstinacy; Minerva, Intellectual Power, Practical Reason; Mercury, Executive Power, Understanding; Apollo was Genius, the Sun; Bacchus was Geniality, the Earth's answer.”

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 Identification rationale not yet recorded.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

On Friendship

quotedManuscript page
“in the figures on antique gems and bas-reliefs of meetings between the gods, it is yours I find, by far they present me another with the fall flower of being rather than grow together.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Friendship." Unbound pages, undated. Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 2, Folder: 96.

n.d.—

Poems

pp16, 24, 29–31
readSearch Digital Fuller (page unverified)
“Dian of the lonely life, / Hecate fed on gloom & strife / Phoebe on her throne of air / Only Leila's children fair. ...”

Fuller, Margaret. "Poems." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.

Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.