TRAVEL LITERATURE

The present work presents the expedition of Francisco de Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro in 1541/1542 when they crossed the Amazon River in search of new riches and new territories. The objective is to understand the process of finding the Amazon. The first impressions of the European man about the new lands are present in the chronicle of the Spanish friar Gaspar de Carvajal, which is why it was chosen among the many narratives that present the Amazon to the world, for it has very important points that reveal the European view of America, and also because it serves as a historical landmark regarding the colonization of the Amazon and the formation of Travel Literature. For this, bibliographical studies on the themes were developed, using authors such as Le Goff (1990/1992), Pizarro (2009), Heufemann-Barría (2014), Mignolo (1982) and Almeida (2013) among others, seeking to understand how the medieval man, driven by the ideals of conquest, did not measure efforts to conquer new spaces. One of the paths that most aroused the greed of the colonizers was undoubtedly the one taken by Gonzalo Pizarro, who introduced the Amazon to the Old World.