WorkHomer

Odysseia [The Odyssey]

Odysseia [The Odyssey], Book 9 (c. 8th c. BCE) Inferred

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

ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1839–1850

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Letters • Books • Manuscripts

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. Transcendentalist4records

V. New York1record

VI. Europe2records

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

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.

1840—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p179

mentioned

“She seemed to loose the record of past summer hours from her permanent life as lightly as spontaneously as the great genius casts behind him a literature, the Odyssey he has outgrown.”

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

1841—

Letter to Henry D. Thoreau

p243

read

“Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.”

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

Inferred Fuller advises Thoreau to 'Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.' The lotus is a clear allusion to the Lotus-Eaters episode of Homer's Odyssey, Book 9 (ll. 82–104), in which Odysseus's men eat the honey-sweet lotus and lose all desire to return home, falling into blissful forgetfulness.

1842—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p80

read

“his, like mine, is the Ulysses of the Odyssey, with his deep romance of wisdom, and not the worldling of the Iliad”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. III. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

1845—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Fourth of July” · July 4, 1845, July 1845 · p. 2

read

“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.

1846—

Papers on Literature and Art

p37

excerpted · quoted · read

“shame — Homer's be the Greek / My Odyssey in coarse black vivid type / With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page / "He said, and on Antinous directed / A bitter shaft”

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

1850—

Letter to Amelia Greenwood

p108

read

“one temple lies open to those rough visitants the winds in forlorn and ghastly relief to the sister temple whose hyacinthine locks "such soft expression give”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Inferred Fuller's phrase "hyacinthine locks" is a classical allusion used playfully in a witty letter to Amelia Greenwood, describing how one side of her hair adorns the temple while the other lies bare. The epithet appears in Homer's Odyssey (Book VI, where Athena adorns Odysseus) and Milton's Paradise Lost (Book IV, describing Adam's hair), and either or both may be the allusion source.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

Mostly Extracts

p56

analyzed · readManuscript page

“In the Odysseu there are [views?] enough, but rising from lofty or from powerful passions and under the veil of mystery and poetry, there are virtues, too enough, and human and definite and practicable.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Mostly Extracts." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (89); Box 5 (89).

Inferred Named as 'Odysseu' (the Odyssey) within the Pentameron extracts. The Pentameron's conversations frequently compare Homer and Virgil with Dante and Boccaccio.

Within the Pentameron extracts, the text reads 'In the Odysseu there are views enough' — 'Odysseu' is clearly a transcription of the Odyssey.

n.d.—

Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth

readManuscript page

“I have just been reading the Odyssey and am about to take up Hesiod, will you not read sometimes in these good books and make notes for me?”

Fuller, Margaret. "Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p66

analyzed · read

“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.