SYNTHESIS OF DOCUMENTARY AND ARTISTIC APPROACHES IN MARGARET FULLER’S DISPATCHES FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY ROME

Abstract

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) – an American Romantic writer– as a foreign correspondent of the U. S. A. in Europe covered the revolutionary events of 1848–49 for the New York Tribune. Her dispatches from Rome are especially interesting for researchers, as Fuller was both а witness and а participant of the revolution in Rome; these dispatches are the object of analysis here. Fuller combined a journalistic report with an attempt to grasp the historic significance of the events. The analysis shows that, to achieve this goal, she used the experience of the historical genres of literature and fine arts. Fuller compared the events in Rome and their participants with the images created by writers and artists, analyzed the methods of the authors in order to develop her own narrative strategies and explain them to the readers as her partners on the way to understanding the meaning of the historic moment the world was living through. Fuller’s publicistic works were a synthesis of artistic forms, documents and journalistic reports; this synthesis enabled her to show the scale and significance of the events in Europe, express her own position and support the revolutionaries who, she believed, continued the cause of the American Revolution.