Amazon

Lorde’s rhetorical question about the Amazons of Dahomey convinces readers of her self-change because this change is not new but represents a recollection. Lorde has become what she always has been, but empowered by the full knowledge and the now embodied scars of that identity.

Frank argues that the Amazon of Dahomey functions for Lorde as an identity-epiphany: the metaphor recollects a pre-existing self, transforming mastectomy scar into the mark of the warrior-feminine.

Frank, Arthur W., The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 1995thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

why does the girl-anima-princess need the amazon belt? And why does Hera constellate the fight? This Admete, the princess, was a priestess of Hera. We have yet to work out something on Hera and the amazons. This might be of particular importance to you.

Hillman poses the Amazon girdle and Hera’s intervention as an open theoretical puzzle, identifying the Hera–Amazon nexus as a site of unresolved mythological and psychological significance.

Russell, Dick, Life and Ideas of James Hillman, 2023thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The Amazon Penthesileia, the daughter of the war god Ares, newly arrived to help the Trojans, is slain by Achilles.

The Amazon appears in the classical epic tradition as a martial figure whose death by Achilles belongs to the chain of events foreshadowing the hero’s own end.

Lattimore, Richmond, The Iliad of Homer, 2011supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

remote and pagan and polytheistic places of animals, rocks and trees like the Amazon, West Irian, and the sub-Sahara, which may be new to Christ but where nature gods similar to Pan and Orpheus have always been present.

Hillman names the Amazon as one of the last living polytheistic ecologies threatened by Western Christian and commercial expansion, linking it to the archetypal presences of Pan and Orpheus.

Hillman, James, Mythic Figures, 2007supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

He gets the girdle easily, but just then Hera appears disguised as an Amaz[on] and raises trouble and brings about the battle.

In Hillman’s reading of the Heracles myth, Hera’s disguise as an Amazon precipitates conflict, suggesting the Amazon figure is implicated in divine jealousy and the disruption of heroic labor.

Russell, Dick, Life and Ideas of James Hillman, 2023supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →