Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Greek

Folklore & Mythology Tradition

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

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

Related

Entities
Aphrodite (Venus) · Apollo · Artemis (Diana) · Athena (Minerva) · Cassandra · Demeter (Ceres) · Dionysus (Bacchus) · Eros (Cupid) · Graces (Charites) · Heracles (Hercules) · Hermes (Mercury) · Medea · Muses · Narcissus · Odysseus (Ulysses) · Oedipus · Prometheus · Psyche · Tantalus · Theseus · Zeus (Jupiter)
Authors
Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) · Hesiod · Homer · Plato · Marcus Vitruvius Pollio · Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock · Diodorus Siculus

Representative documentary evidence

1819—

Letter to Ellen Kilshaw

read
“As the slow messenger Mercury will soon bend his course toward England [...] (whether he is faithful I know not but I know he is not nearly as swift as his namesake the messenger of the gods)”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller names the ship Mercury and then deliberately glosses the mythological reference: "not nearly as swift as his namesake the messenger of the gods." This demonstrates her knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology at age 9, identifying Mercury/Hermes by his divine epithet.

1825—

L-2 [Letter 53, 11 July 1825, To Susan Prescott]

quoted
“About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school and study Greek till twelve”

L-2 [Letter 53, 11 July 1825, To Susan Prescott]

1832—

Letter to Unknown

p175
analyzed · read
“His feelings are as false as those of Alcibiades.”

Fuller, Margaret. Letter 75 (January 1832). In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817-1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Hudspeth identified Alcibiades (c. 450–404 BCE) as an Athenian general, politician, and friend of Socrates, whose character and life are most likely known to Fuller through Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades in the Parallel Lives.

1833—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p259
analyzed · read
“I have read 'La Rome Souterraine' of Didier, and it makes me wish to see Ardea and Nettuno.”

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

1836—

L-2 [Letter 126, 20 April 1836, To Samuel G. Ward]

quoted
“all those tales of mermaid enchantments which embody this feeling”

L-2 [Letter 126, 20 April 1836, To Samuel G. Ward]

1837—

A Poem for Rebecca Blodget

p. 1
analyzed · readManuscript page
“A graceful fiction of the olden day / Tells us that, by a mighty master's sway / A city rose, obedient to the lyre; / That his sweet strains rude matter could inspire / With zeal his harmony to emulate.— / Thus to the spot where that sweet singer sate / The rocks advanced, in symmetry combined, / To form the palace and the temple joined; / The Arts are sisters and united all, / So Architecture answered Music's call.”

Fuller, Margaret. "A Poem for Rebecca Blodget." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Inferred The author is cataloged as 'Anonymous (Greek mythology) Inferred' because Fuller does not name a specific ancient author — she treats the myth as a floating 'fiction of the olden day.'

1838—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p331
analyzed · read
“The Titans are the lower passions— They dared to attempt to scale with ladders those serene heights where dwell the gods.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Inferred Fuller invokes the Titans as a mythological reference to represent "the lower passions," describing their failed attempt to scale the heights where the gods dwell.

1839—

L-2 [Letter 227, 17 August 1839, To Elizabeth Hoar]

quoted
“you shall see with your eyes Venus, sea born, of whom before you have only dreamed and love ever after foam and sea weed better than the reddest roses—which celebrate the loss of Adonis.”

L-2 [Letter 227, 17 August 1839, To Elizabeth Hoar]

1839—

L-2 [Letter 233, ca. October 1839, To Samuel G. Ward]

quoted
“Do you not feel how I should grieve to be the ghost to cross the path of true communion in the Elysian grove.”

L-2 [Letter 233, ca. October 1839, To Samuel G. Ward]

1839—

L-2 [Letter 239, 25 November 1839, To unknown]

quoted2 selected passages
“the first time was the genealogy of heaven and earth, then the will (Jupiter); the Understanding, (Mercury) Second, the celestial inspiration of genius, perception and transmission of divine law (Apol”
“we came to the wave, and the seashell it moulds; to Beauty, and Love, her parent her child”

L-2 [Letter 239, 25 November 1839, To unknown]

1839—

Letter to Caroline Sturgis

p34
analyzed · read3 selected passages
“I know the Titanic era must come ere long, but, oh Cary, do nothing to hasten it. Ward it off as long as possible by occupation.”

Inferred Fuller alludes to the Titanomachy through the Titans' failed assault on Olympus, invoking the classical mythological tradition found in Hesiod's Theogony.

“the wise charioteer managed both his steeds; he needed not to unyoke either but chose rather to remember their several natures”

Inferred Fuller alludes to Plato's famous charioteer allegory from the Phaedrus (246a–254e), where the soul is likened to a charioteer managing two horses—one noble and rational, one base and passionate.

“For my part I shall never be happy, unless I could live like Pericles and Aspasia. I want the long arcade, the storied street, the lyre and garland.”

Inferred Fuller invokes Pericles and Aspasia as an ideal of Athenian intellectual and cultural life—Pericles the great statesman-orator, Aspasia his intellectual companion who conversed with Socrates and taught rhetoric—drawing on Plutarch's Life of Pericles in the Parallel Lives.

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

1839—

Letter to Elizabeth Hoar

p66
read
“I feel near a faithful breast, yet gently put back by an irresistible power. I am like Ulysses near the loved shades.”

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

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Ulysses in comparing her own emotional longing to the hero's experience in Odyssey Book XI (the Nekyia), where Odysseus encounters the shades of the dead and repeatedly tries to embrace his mother Anticleia, only to have her slip through his arms like a shadow—an image that echoes Fuller's own sense of being near a loved one yet gently repelled by an irresistible force.