Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

WorkAesop

Fable of Androcles and the Lion

Aesop (c. 620 BCE–c. 564 BCE)

InferredThis is an allusion to the fable of Androcles and the lion, in which a runaway slave removes a thorn from a lion's paw and is later spared by the same lion in the arena. CE), which cites Apion's lost Aegyptiaca. It is a common tale in the Aesopic tradition (Roper Aarne-Thompson type 156) and was standardly included in 19th-century Aesop collections.

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Documented 1845

Letters

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

No datable encounters with Aesop have been catalogued yet.

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p107
read
“I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for awhile”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Inferred Fuller alludes to the Aesopic fable of Androcles and the Lion—a runaway slave who removes a thorn from a lion's paw and is later spared by the same lion in the arena—inverting the usual dynamic by positioning herself as the one who might remove Nathan's thorn of grief.

1845—

Letter to James Nathan

p92
read
“I would have you come to me like the sick lion and let me see if I cannot take out the thorn — and if I cannot, let me at least soothe to rest for a while.”

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

Inferred This is an allusion to the fable of Androcles and the lion, in which a runaway slave removes a thorn from a lion's paw and is later spared by the same lion in the arena. CE), which cites Apion's lost Aegyptiaca. It is a common tale in the Aesopic tradition (Roper Aarne-Thompson type 156) and was standardly included in 19th-century Aesop collections.