{"product_id":"the-courtesans-arts-crosscultural-perspectives","title":"The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives","description":"\u003cp\u003eCourtesans  hetaeras  tawaif-s  ji-s--these women have exchanged artistic graces  elevated conversation  and sexual favors with male patrons throughout history and around the world. Of a different world than common prostitutes  courtesans deal in artistic and intellectual pleasures in ways that are wholly interdependent with their commerce in sex. In pre-colonial India  courtesans cultivated a wide variety of artistic skills  including magic  music  and chemistry. In Ming dynasty China  courtesans communicated with their patrons through poetry and music. Yet because these cultural practices have existed primarily outside our present-day canons of art and have often occurred through oral transmission  courtesans arts have vanished almost without trace.  The Courtesans Arts delves into this hidden legacy  unveiling the artistic practices and cultural production of courtesan cultures with a sideways glance at the partly-related geisha. Balancing theoretical and empirical research  this interdisciplinary collection is the first of its kind to explore courtesan cultures through diverse case studies--the Edo period and modern Japan  20th-century Korea  Ming dynasty China  ancient Greece  early modern Italy  and India  past and present. Each essay puts forward new perspectives on how the arts have figured in the courtesans survival or demise.  Though performative and often flamboyant  courtesans have been enigmatic and elusive to their beholders--including scholars. They have shaped cultures through art  yet their arts  often intangible  have all but faded from view. Often courtesans have hovered in the crevices of space  time  and practice--between gifts and money  courts and cities  feminine allure and masculine power  as substitutes for wives but keepers of culture. Reproductively irrelevant  they have tended to be ambiguous figures  thriving on social distinction while operating outside official familial relations. They have symbolized desirability and sophistication yet often been reviled as decadent.  The Courtesans Arts shows that while courtesans cultures have appeared regularly in various times and places  they are universal neither as a phenomenon nor as a type. To the contrary  when they do crop up  wide variations exist. What binds together courtesans and their arts in the present-day post-industrialized world of global services and commodities is their fragility. Once vital to cultures of leisure and pleasure  courtesans are now largely forgotten  transformed into national icons or historical curiosities  or reduced to prostitution.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44985799049269,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195170296","price":199.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195170290.jpg?v=1770871728","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-courtesans-arts-crosscultural-perspectives","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}