Ariel

Ariel is an influential essay by the Uruguayan writer José Enrique Rodó that appeared in 1900. The title alludes to a character in Shakespeare's The Tempest who in this short book becomes a symbol of the enlightening spirit with which the author aspires to enhance Latin American culture. Written in the aftermath of Spain's imperial collapse in the war of 1898 against the United States and addressed primarily to young Latin Americans, Ariel is both an idealistic call to cultural independence and a warning against the tendency toward utilitarian overconfidence that Rodó discerned in North American progressive materialism. The essay is presented as a scholarly final lecture by old Próspero (alluding to the protagonist of The Tempest), who exhorts his students as builders of the future to strive individually for standards of excellence. Ariel is less a social philosophy than a cultural manifesto, the elitist spirit and erudite style of which have variously been defended or attacked by Latin American readers and writers as Arielismo.

See alsoArielismo; Krausismo; Positivism; Rodó, José Enrique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alas, Leopold. "Clarín." Prologue to Ariel by José Enrique Rodó, 5th edition. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1975.

González Echevarría, Roberto. "The Case of the Speaking Statue: Ariel and the Magisterial Rhetoric of the Latin American Essay." In his The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.

Fuentes, Carlos. Prologue to Ariel by José Enrique Rodó. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Austin: University of Texas, 1988.

Miller, Nicola. "The 1890s–1900s." In her In the Shadow of the State: Intellectuals and the Quest for National Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin America, pp. 96-114. London and New York: Verso, 1999.

San Román, Gustavo This America We Dream Of: Rodó and 'Ariel' One-Hundred Years On. London: Institute for Latin American Studies, 2001.

Ward, Thomas. "Rodó y las 'jerarquías imperativas,'" In his Resistencia cultural: La nación en el ensayo de las Américas, pp. 72-85. Lima: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2004.

                                 Peter G. Earle