Rodó, José Enrique

Related Category: Latin American Literature: Biographies

(hōsā´ ānrē´kā rôdō´), 1872–1917, Uruguayan essayist, literary critic, and philosopher. Rodó spent most of his life in Montevideo, where he helped to found and edit La Revista Nacional de Literatura y Ciencias Sociales. In his essays, reflecting the spirit of modernismo, he sought to develop a new philosophy of ethics and create a new political spirit. In Ariel (1900, tr. 1988), his most influential work, he calls upon Latin America to hold to cultural values unsullied by the materialistic impact of the United States. Other collections of essays are The Motives of Proteo (1909, tr. 1928) and El mirador de Próspero [Próspero's balcony] (1913).