La chèvre ou la femme. Parentés de lait entre animaux et humains au Moyen Âge.

This article launches an investigation about images of interspecies breast-feeding in the Middle Ages. Thought as a transmission of humors and features, milk kinship was higlhy rated at the time, and was often questioned about fostering practices. Breast-feeding of human children by animals allows to reconsider both human/animal forms of relationship, definition of lineage, and their eventual transgressions. As hagiographical topic, and sign of election, breast-feeding by wild beasts appears as a deviant practice but paradoxically positively valued. On the contrary, sequels of fostering by tame animals are regularly denounced. And women breast-feeding animals often appear as a proof of the animalship of their gender. The symbolic images of Terra breast-feeding the animals are presented until the XIIth century as positive images of fertility, however from the XIIIe century onwards, proximity between human and animal through breast-feeding appears highly transgressive. By the XIVth century, taste for Antiquity’s historical and heroical narratives associated with hagiographic images, reveal the savage child, fed by animals as a paragon of greatnes