Unexpected encounters Appropriations, re-readings, resignifications of "Ariel"

Abstract

This article intends to trace the ups and downs of José Enrique Rodó’s "Ariel" (1900), especially after its first success. The importance of some of its ruling ideas is traced as well as its rereadings and resignifications (Rodó himself had done this with Shakespeare’s writings) whereby Rodó’s initial intentions yields to ideas that diverge from the original text. Having one of the parables that are part of Rodó’s essays as a starting point, this article attempts at a possible intertextuality with a short story by Onetti, pointing to the latter´s possible reading of this same parable and the fact that both texts perhaps shed light on two different ways to view Uruguay.