WorkTorquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) · 1575; also titled La Gerusalemme Liberata
ExcerptedAnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned
Documented 1829–1847
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Letters • Books • Journals
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.
“look to Fairfax, Gerusalemme? Lib. Canto 12 Stanza 77... 'Misero mostro d'infelice amore...' La Gerusalemme Liberata, C.XII.76,77.”
Manuscripts (Houghton Library, Margaret Fuller Family Papers) · December 17th 1829
Substantial quoted stanza passage from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
“Tasso,' says Rousseau, 'has predicted my misfortunes... look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · December 17, 1829
Substantial quoted material with a specific citation (Canto 12, Stanza 77) reflecting sustained textual engagement, though embedded within a Rousseau quotation rather than her own explicit reading statement.
“My translation of Tasso cannot be published at present, if it ever is.”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · March, 1834
Translated engagement type; explicit reference to 'My translation of Tasso.'
“Tasso," says Rousseau "has predicted my misfortunes.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal Entry December 1829." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086.
“La Gerusalemme Liberata, C.XII.76,77. / 'Misero mostro d'infelice amore; / Misero mostro a cui sol pena e degna / Dell' immensa impieta, la vita indegna.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
“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 Tasso as part of her Italian class syllabus, read alongside Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the Divina Commedia. Though no specific work is named, Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) was the standard Tasso text in literary education; Fuller's later translation of Goethe's Torquato Tasso confirms her strong engagement with the Italian poet.
“In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante?”
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
Fuller identifies Torquato Tasso as an Italian author suitable for young readers, distinguishing him from Dante Alighieri and Vittorio Alfieri.
“To Castella Mare and Sorrento. Tall orange groves of Sorrento, House of Tasso, beautiful places in which Tasso lived. Why he was always so unhappy.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Journal 1847–1849." Houghton Library, Harvard University; bMS Am 1086 (94); Box 4.
Inferred Fuller visits the 'House of Tasso' in Sorrento, sees an autograph letter of his, and meditates on his character ('Why he was always so unhappy'). His principal and most celebrated work, Gerusalemme liberata (1581), is inferred as the most likely work in her literary knowledge of Tasso. Fuller names Tasso explicitly as a poet whose life and character she reflects on at his birthplace in Sorrento (c. March 1847).
Undated
Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.
“I've brought my poem to an end; yet much it wants To its completion.”
Fuller, Margaret. Art, Literature, and the Drama. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. New York: The Tribune Association, 1869. · p426
Inferred Identification rationale not yet recorded.
“I hope you have Italian enough to appreciate the singular perfection in expression. If not, look to Fairfax's Jerusalem Delivered, Canto 12, Stanza 77; [...] La Gerusalemme Liberata, c. xii.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.