Margaret Fuller: transatlantic crossings in a revolutionary age

Abstract

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), a pioneering gender theorist, transcendentalist, journalist, and literary critic, was one of most well-known and highly regarded feminist intellectuals of nineteenth-century America. With her contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, she was one of predominant writers of Transcendentalist movement, and she aligned herself in both her public and private life with European revolutionary fervor of 1840s. She traveled to Italy as a foreign correspondent for New York Tribune to cover nascent revolutions, pursuing transnational ideal awakened in her youth by a classical education in European languages and a Romantic curiosity about cultures, traditions, and identities. This volume is a collaboration of international scholars who, from varied fields and approaches, assess Fuller's genius and character. Treating last several years of Margaret Fuller's short life, these essays offer a truly international discussion of Fuller's unique cultural, political, and personal achievements. From origins and articulations of Fuller's cosmopolitanism to her examination of the woman question, and from her fascination with European other to her candid perception of imperial America from abroad, they ponder what such an extraordinary woman meant to America, and also to Italy and Europe, during her lifetime and continuing to present.