“Irritating, insufferable, admirable, stimulating, disappointing Rodó: . . . you are part of our family quarrels, and must bear with your disrespectful, equally disappointed, intuitive, incomplete nephews, living in a world that you helped define for us, and offered unto our revolt.” —from the Prologue by Carlos Fuentes
First published in 1900 Uruguay, Ariel is Latin America’s most famous essay on esthetic and philosophical sensibility, as well as its most discussed treatise on hemispheric relations. Though Rodó protested the interpretation, his allegorical conflict between Ariel, the lover of beauty and truth, and Caliban, the evil spirit of materialism and positivism, has come to be regarded as a metaphor for the conflicts and cultural differences between Latin America and the United States. Generations of statesmen, intellectuals, and literary figures have been formed by this book, either in championing its teachings or in reacting against them. This edition of Ariel, prepared especially with teachers and students in mind, contains a reader’s guide to names, places, and important movements, as well as notes and a comprehensive annotated English/Spanish bibliography.
