WorkHomer

Iliad

Iliad, Book 10 (c. 8th c. BCE); Inferred

Homer (c. 8th century BCE) · c. 8th c. BCE

AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1843–1846

Books • Essays • Notebooks

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

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York5records

VI. Europe1record

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1843—

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

analyzed · read3 selected passages

“which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike that of Rhesus, had he but been as suitably furnished with chariot and steeds!”

Inferred Fuller names 'Rhesus' as a figure of a dashing charioteer without citing a textual source; the reference draws on Iliad Book 10 and/or Euripides' tragedy Rhesus. Rhesus was a mythological king of Thrace and ally of Troy in the Iliad (Book 10), famous for his magnificent white horses and golden armor.

The allusion is to the classical tradition, principally Homer's Iliad 10.435-514 or the tragedy Rhesus attributed to Euripides.

“Here I thought of, or rather saw, what the Greek expresses under the form of Jove's darling, Ganymede, and the following stanzas took form.”

Inferred Fuller explicitly names Ganymede as the Greek mythological figure inspiring her poem 'Ganymede to His Eagle.' She identifies him as 'Jove's darling.' The myth appears first in Homer's Iliad and was also extensively in Pindar, Virgil, and other classical authors.

“The scene in which he appears, accompanied by his wife?who seems to have gone hand in hand with him in this matter?lays down all his best things in a heap, in the middle of the hall, as a ransom for the captive, and his little, quiet speech, are as good as the Iliad.”

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

1845—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Alfieri and Cellini” · 1845

quoted · read

“This sort of man is the modern Achilles, "the tamer of horses.”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p101

Inferred The source is inferred from the quoted phrase; it is uncertain whether Fuller is quoting Homer precisely or using a proverbial Homeric tag.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

p198-199

analyzed · read

“The Andromache here is just as lovely as that of the Iliad. To her child whom they are about to murder, the same that was frightened at the "glittering plume.”

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

Inferred Iliad referenced via Andromache and the 'glittering plume' scene; Hector and Achilles compared. Named explicitly as 'the Iliad.' The 'glittering plume' is from Iliad Book 6 (Andromache-Hector farewell scene, where baby Astyanax is frightened by Hector's helmet).

1845—

Review.

“Review.”

mentioned2 selected passages

“They like the “Arabian Nights,” and “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Bunyan’s Emblems,” and Shakspeare, and the “Iliad” and “Odyssey;”

“but—the “Spectator,” “Telemachus,” “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature” and the “Iliad.” Forms of gods and heroes more distinctly seen”

Fuller, Margaret. "Review." New-York Daily Tribune, 5 February 1845.

1845—

Thom’s Poems.

“Thom’s Poems.”

mentioned

“Those who demand this will be content only with the Iliads and Odysseys of the mind’s endeavor.—They can feed no where but at rich men’s tables”

Fuller, Margaret. "Thom’s Poems." New-York Daily Tribune, 22 August 1845. · 22 August 1845

1846—

Poets of the People

“Poets of the People”

mentioned

“Those who demand this will be content only with the Iliads and Odysseys of the mind's endeavour.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p179

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p179; 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.

n.d.—

Notebook 1842

p28

mentionedManuscript page

“In one of the manuscripts which was in / the hands of the interpreters when I was / at Pompeii, the author indulges in the / speculation that all the Homeric / personages were allegorical — that / Agamemnon was the ether, Achilles the / sun, Helen the earth, Paris the air, / Hector the moon &c”

Fuller, Margaret. "Notebook 1842." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (90); Box 6.

Inferred The title is inferred as the Iliad because all named characters (Agamemnon, Achilles, Helen, Paris, Hector) are figures of the Iliad.

n.d.—

The Desert—By Felicien David.

“The Desert—By Felicien David.”

mentioned

“for our Homers build their Iliads in the Future rather than the Past.”

Fuller, Margaret. "The Desert—By Felicien David." New-York Daily Tribune, .