Las piernas de la duquesa: Praxis médica y claves hermenéuticas en el Quijote de 1615

Based on early modern medical texts, a new understanding of the therapeutic use of fuentes on the duchess’s thighs brings about a shift in the hermeneutics of Don Quixote and leads us to a necessary reinterpretation of a character who, besides being one of the key figures in the second part (appearing over some 30 chapters), has not been sufficiently understood in her individuality. Analysis of the duchess has always been framed within the generic category of the ducal couple–los duques–and she thus has most often been excluded from the corpus of feminine characters (Zoraida, Marcela, Camila, Ana Félix, and even Maritornes) of special relevance in the novel who exemplify what I call the work’s “poetics of the feminine” or the will to explore through novelistic fiction the social problematic of women in that epoch.