Analysis of recurrent language and images in the representation of Amazonia in Brazilian literature shows that the region has been depicted predominantly as a space apart onto which authors project economic, aesthetic, and sociopolitical desires that usually derive from other cultures. The creation of such symbolic territory reproduces expectations that depend on a continuing intellectual debate for their form of expression. In "Land of Metaphorical Desires" Pedro Maligo examines chronologically the works of the most important Brazilian writers who have participated in this debate from the 1870s to the 1980s.