How the amazon myth has been transformed in the Allegory of America

Abstract

The myth of the Amazons goes back to the imagery of Ancient Greece, in the belief of the existence of a women warrior society who refused to be dominate by men. In its transposition to the New World, this theme underwent several transformations, when recurrently alluded in both travel literature and iconography. In these two types of sources, in their concordances and discrepancies, the Amazons re-emerged in America as true men devourers and exalted archers who lived constantly from the war against their enemies. That said, we start from the central issue that this narrative, in its constant metamorphosis, came to transfer elements and, even, to become the own allegory of the continent, personified in the figure of a naked body cannibal wild woman carrying the bow and arrow.