Ariel is a mermaid that stars in Disney's 1989 production, The Little Mermaid. She is a stubborn teenager (is this phrase redundant?) and frequently gets into trouble with her father, King Triton, who seeks to avoid contact with the human world rather religiously.

Ariel lives in Atlantica, which is an undersea city constructed from coral and an unknown metallic substance that manages to survive constant exposure to salt water. In Atlantica, pretty much all sea life, from sponges to dolphins to sharks to jellyfish, are sentient and can speak English. This lends rather well to amusing sitautions. Note that Atlantica should not be confused with Atlantis, which was supposedly a human city.

Her favorite pasttime is going up to the surface to watch and study humans, and to collect their paraphernalia, much to her father's annoyance. The human world fascinates her to no end; it's a classic case of "the grass is greener on the other side". This is especially depicted in the TV series, which accounts her adventures before the movie.

All of this obsession eventually culminates in her falling in love with a human, Prince Eric. We don't know the name of the Kingdom Eric is a prince of, and we never see his parents, but all that is inconsequential. Ariel strikes up a dangerous deal with Ursula the Sea Witch to become human, and eventually gets to be with her prince. Awww.

Ariel's voice, in all the productions she's been in, is provided by Jodi Benson. You may have also heard her voice in Barbie commercials and in some other Disney movies.

Ariel is the name of the air spirit (sylph) bound to Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Cletus the Foetus notes that Prospero refers to Ariel in the masculine. I'd contend that Shakespeare's Ariel, as an inhuman being of ambiguous form, transcends gender. It's not unusual to find women cast in Ariel's role in modern stage productions of Shakespeare's play.

In Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novels, Ariel is recast as the "body servant" of the wererat Lady Hisvet. There's a titillating scene (in Swords of Lankhmar, I think) where Ariel pleasures The Gray Mouser as Hisvet whispers naughty nothings in his ear, claiming a "demoiselle of Lankhmar" (i.e. Hisvet) is too refined and delicate to directly engage in such loveplay. In this story, Ariel retains much of her manner (if not her dignity) from The Tempest.

'Ariel' is also the name of the BBC's in-house staff magazine (although, oddly, it's also available to the general public); it's published every Tuesday morning and, as you might expect, it's mostly very, very dull, reading like the kind of free pamphlet the local government or transport system might hand out (Londoners who commute will probably have read the page of 'The Metro' which is written by London Underground - it's the same thing, really).

The exception is the letters page, which is usually filled with bitchy letters from employees fed up with the BBC (most famously Terry Wogan, who seems to send in rants directed at the lack of change / superfluity of change / whatever takes his fancy).

Here is a real letter from May the 15th, 2002, as an example of the insane fury unleashed over this page:

Fobbed Off
About ten years ago I purchased a recoil ski pass holder for my ski pass. It has served me well and is now used as my dongle/fob carrier. Why then, in these days of cutting the crap, have I had to replace by BBC yo-yo/skipass/id on a string? The last one survived approximately five hours before it broke, prompting me to put fingers to keyboard. Can we not spend a few pennies more and get decent ones?
Kevin White
Senior physical network manager
Technology

Ariel was a horse on which Sylvia Plath was learning to ride. The experience of riding it was the basis of her poem "Ariel", written in about October 1962, and this poem gave its name to the posthumous (1965) collection Ariel, on which her fame and importance chiefly rests.

The horse is referred to only allusively in the 31-line poem, as the arc of a neck she cannot catch, and a mention of Godiva, but is very present in the fierce motion and the imagery of sexual potential: both feminine and masculine (lioness, foam, arrow). She is fleeing from and to death ("suicidal, at one with the drive"), and the poem is pervaded by darkness and blood; and also by a sense of timeless or abolished space, opening with the words "Stasis in darkness / Then the substanceless blue".

The poems Plath was working on from about June 1962 to her death in February the following year are the ones her reputation rests on, including "Daddy", "Lady Lazarus", and all her preoccupation with death, Germans, Jews, mutilation, sexuality, rage, and so on. Ted Hughes collected them into a slim volume he called Ariel and they were published by Faber and Faber in 1965.

The poems in the collection are:

1. Morning Song
2. The Couriers
3. Sheep in Fog
4. The Applicant
5. Lady Lazarus
6. Tulips
7. Cut
8. Elm
9. The Night Dances
10. Poppies in October
11. Berck-Plage
12. Ariel
13. Death & Co.
14. Nick and the Candlestick
15. Gulliver
16. Getting There
17. Medusa
18. The Moon and the Yew Tree
19. A Birthday Present
20. Letter in November
21. The Rival
22. Daddy
23. You're
24. Fever 103º
25. The Bee Meeting
26. The Arrival of the Bee Box
27. Stings
28. Wintering
29. The Hanging Man
30. Little Fugue
31. Years
32. The Munich Mannequins
33. Totem
34. Paralytic
35. Balloons
36. Poppies in July
37. Kindness
38. Contusion
39. Edge
40. Words

N.B. Hardlinks in the above are for cross-reference only. None of the poem texts should exist on E2, as that would be copyright violation.

Ariel (also Arael, Ariael) : Angel whose name means "lion of God." Ariel appears in biblical, apocryphal, Gnostic, Coptic and occult literature in a variety of guises, both angel and demon.

The apocryphal book of Ezra calls Ariel an angel. In the Old Testament, the book of Isiah refers to Ariel as an altar, man and city. This was echoed by the Renaissance occultist Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, who referred to Ariel as a demon, angel or city. In Hebrew lore, Ariel is a name for Jerusalem, and in kabbalistic lore it is the name of a virtue. Ariel is ranked among the seven princes by Thomas Heywood in The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels. In the Coptic Pistis Sophia, Ariel rules the lower world, and in Gnosticism he is associated with the creator god Ialdabaoth. In ceremonial magical texts, Ariel is described as a lion-headed angel.

Shakespeare named a fairy Ariel in The Tempest. Ariel also figures in Gaelic prayers of protection for the home and earth.

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source for additional reading/information:

Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

A"ri*el (&?;), n., or A"ri*el ga*zelle" (&?;). [Ar. aryil, ayyil, stag.] (Zoöl.)

(a)

A variety of the gazelle (Antilope, or Gazella, dorcas), found in Arabia and adjacent countries.

(b)

A squirrel-like Australian marsupial, a species of Petaurus.

(c)

A beautiful Brazilian toucan Ramphastos ariel).

 

© Webster 1913

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A"ri*el (?), n. [Heb. ariël, perh. confused with E. aërial.]

In the Cabala, a water spirit; in later folklore, a light and graceful spirit of the air.

⇒ In zoölogy, ariel is used adjectively of certain birds noted for their graceful flight; as, the ariel toucan; the ariel petrel.

 

© Webster 1913