WorkLudovico Ariosto
Orlando Furioso (first published 1516; final version 1532)
Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) · 1516; revised 1532
AnalyzedReadMentioned
Documented 1825–1846
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Essays • Notebooks • Manuscripts
Selected engagements, in chronological order.
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 →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“I devote to you the hours which Ariosto and Helvetius ask of my eyes,—as, lying on my writing-desk, they put me in mind that they must return this week to their owner.”
Letters of Margaret Fuller ed. Hudspeth · Cambridge, it July 1825
MERGED 2026-10-11: absorbed duplicate witness(es) re481 (Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (sections), Mem-2-01 l.2078-2084, letter dated Cambridge, July 11 1825; tier A; same passage) — counted once here. Describes the specific borrowed volumes 'lying on my writing-desk' that 'must return this week,' placing the book physically in her hands at a dated moment.
“I devote to you the hours which Ariosto and Helvetius ask of my eyes,—as, lying on my writing-desk, they put me in mind that they must return this week to their owner.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“Par che n’egli occhi a vampi una facella, / Ariosto”
Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“With the Italian class, I read parts of Tasso, Petrarch,—whom they came to almost adore,—Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hundred cantos of the Divina Commedia”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names Ariosto as part of her Italian class syllabus.
“In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy...”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p103
Inferred The title Orlando Furioso is inferred, as it is Ariosto's most prominent work.
“He was really the Orlando Furioso turned Goldsmith, and Angelicas and all the Peers of France joined in the show.”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Italy." New-York Daily Tribune, 13 November 1845. · 13 November 1845
“Should I be honored by that noble prince With marks of favor, such as I may surely Expect from him, the courtiers of Alphonso Could easily deprive me of his favor.”
Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p425
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p425; page given is to the 1869 reprint.
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“Heedless she flits onward to some hopeless desert, where she pauses only to turn to her unfortunate captive the malicious face of a very Morgana.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p281
Inferred Allusion to Morgan le Fay (Fata Morgana), the enchantress of Arthurian legend and of Italian Renaissance epic, including Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The figure was a cultural commonplace well known to Fuller and her readers.
“p44: 'Levy's Tatavinity — resilience. Ariosto's moon.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes toward The Life of Goethe." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Inferred Fuller mentions 'Ariosto's moon' — a well-known episode from Orlando Furioso (Canto XXXIV) where Astolfo travels to the moon. No other work by Ariosto is relevant to this reference.
“Cambridge, July \, 1825. — Having excused myself from accompanying my honoured father to church...”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.