Table of contents

Abstract & Preface

poetry by
Adrienne Rich


Chapter I:
The hand of "El caballero de la mano al pecho"

Chapter II:
Iconographical sources of nursing and nursing gestures in pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures

Chapter III:
Iconographical sources of nursing and nursing gestures in Christian cultures

Chapter IV:
Breast-feeding forms in the Renaissance

Chapter V:
Literary sources of lactating goddesses

Chapter VI:
The meaning
of the
Ostentatio Mammarum
and the
pseudo- zygodactylous gesture


Illustrations & Bibliography

Biographical sketch

Footnotes


Small mouths, needy, suck you: This is love
- To a poet



Remind me how we loved our mother's body
our mouths drawing the first thin
sweetness from her nipples

- Sibling mysteries



... And how beneath

the strange male bodies
we sank in terror and resignation
and how we taught them tenderness

the holding-back, the play,
the floating of a finger
the secrets of the nipple

- Sibling mysteries, 3




-- Adrienne Rich, The dream of
a common language

poems 1974-1977