La abadesa embargada por el pie

Abstract

Sexual repression has provoked in human communication various mechanisms of displacement by which the genitals have been replaced with other parts of the body. The foot (legs, thighs), focus of attention in this study, has obvious sexual connotations in numerous biblical texts, in Spanish learned, religious narrative and traditional lyrics, and in colloquial proverbs and other sayings in English, French, German and Spanish cultures. The contributions of psychoanalysts and ethnologists are very helpfull in dilucidating the psychogenesis of the symbolic foot; a literary and philological analysis of Berceo' s myracle on the abbess impregnated through the foot shows how gracefully the first Castilian poet evoided the direct, cacophonic and anxiety arousing language and replaced it with traditional metonimies and witty and ambiguous etimologies.