Folklore & Mythology Figure
Documented in Fuller’s books, notebooks, memoirs
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
“who, even thus self-enchained, rose to Ulyssean stature [...] the economy of the King of Ithaca, in always reserving a part for their own use.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p21-55
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“The true text is: — "Mine own Telemachus He does his work — I mine.”
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 engages with Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses," published in his 1842 collection Poems, by quoting and adapting the lines, "Mine own Telemachus / He does his work — I mine." These words, a condensed recollection from the poem's description of Telemachus, are presented by Fuller as "the true text" to commend Ralph Waldo Emerson's distinct and independent method of work.
“the white root, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus, shall have power to restore the herd of men, disguised by the enchantress to whom they had willingly yielded in the forms of brutes, to the stature and beauty of men.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.
Inferred Fuller develops an extended allegory from Odyssey Book X, in which Odysseus receives the magical herb moly (white root, black below) from Hermes to protect him from Circe's enchantment. Fuller calls it "the white root, detected by the patient and resolved Odysseus," adapting the Homeric narrative to a political allegory about principled individuals restoring the nation.
“the interpretation of Bacon upon the legends of the Syren coast.”
Inferred The title is inferred: Fuller paraphrases Bacon's readings of the Sirens and Orpheus without naming the work.
“When the wise Ulysses passed, says he, he caused his mariners to stop their ears with wax, knowing there was in them no power to resist the lure of that voluptuous song.”
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.
“My purpose holds / To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars, until I die.”
Mem-2 [Section VI-A: Jamaica Plain]
“One of his themes has long been my favorite, — the last expedition of Ulysses, — and his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad.”
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 engages with Homer's Odyssey, here distinguishing Ulysses' "deep romance of wisdom" from his portrayal in the Iliad. Fuller states this theme has "long been my favorite," suggesting a well-established familiarity and recurring interest in the epic's narrative.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“From Kinmont's lectures on the natural / history of man and the rise and / progress of philosophy.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook 1842." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (90); Box 6.