La leche polifónica : estudios sobre las nodrizas en la península ibérica, siglos XIII-XVI

This volume offers a diversified approach to the representation of the Wet nurses from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula, in the light of recent research on the role of women in peninsular history. For a long time, the Wet nurse was a figure of little value in a literary tradition that was often misogynistic and did not hesitate to blacken the picture of the social practice of breastfeeding and to denounce -for the most part- the dangers of mercenary milk. Although they have been the focus of Genders Studies in recent decades, Wet nurses have been the subject of few studies in the Iberian Peninsula. In order to approach this shadowy figure in all its complexity, La leche polifónica: las nodrizas en la literatura hispánica (siglos XIII-XVI) probes literary and historiographic texts as well as medical treatises and documents of the practice in the Christian and Arab kingdoms of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Spain. This polyphony makes possible to highlight the representations of Wet nurses in the writings of male authors and to grasp the symbolic, religious, socio-political and even ideological meanings of their presence.