The courtesan's arts : cross-cultural perspectives / edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Feldman, Martha.

Gordon, Bonnie, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Courtesans--History--Cross-cultural studies.

Courtesans.

History.

Genre:

Cross-cultural studies.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 396 pages : illustrations, map, music ; 24 cm + 1 audio disc (digital ; 4 3/4 in.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

Summary:

Courtesans, 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. In Ming dynasty China and early modern Italy, exchange was made through poetry, speech, and music; in pre-colonial India through magic, music, chemistry, and other arts. Yet like the art of courtesanry itself, those arts have often thrived outside present-day canons and modes of transmission, and have mostly vanished without trace.

The Courtesan's Arts delves into this hidden legacy, while touching on its equivocal relationship to geisha. At once interdisciplinary, empirical, and theoretical, the book is the first to ask how arts have figured in the survival or demise of courtesan cultures by juxtaposing research from different fields. Among cases studied by writers on classics, ethnomusicology, anthropology, and various histories of art, music, literature, and political culture are Ming dynasty China, twentieth-century Korea, Edo and modern Japan, ancient Greece, early modern Italy, and India, past and present. Refusing a universal model, the authors nevertheless share a perception that courtesans hover in the crevices of space, time, and practice-between gifts and money, courts and cities, subtlety and flamboyance, feminine allure and masculine power, as wifely surrogates but keepers of culture. What most binds them to their arts in our post-industrialized world of global services and commodities, they find, is courtesans' fragility, as their cultures, once vital to civilizations founded in leisure and pleasure, are now largely forgotten, transforming courtesans into national icons or historical curiosities, or reducing them to prostitution.

Contents:

Dolce mio ben, dolce colomba mia : from Secondo libro de madrigali a quattro voci / Baldissera [i.e. Baldassare] Donato

Chiaro e famoso mare [to the music of] Chiare fresch'e dolci acque. First stanza / Jacques [i.e. Jacob] Arcadelt

Nel partir del mio ben : from Primo libro de madrigali a 4 / Perissone Cambio

Non più parole [to the tune "Aria in terza rima," no. 63 in the lute book of Cosimo Bottegari (MacClintock ed.)]

O dolce nocte / Philippe Verdelot

Cantate ninfe : from the 1st book of madrigals for 6 voices / Luca Marenzio

Sì come dit'ogn'hor : from the 3rd book of madrigals for 4 voices / Arcadelt

Donna, fra più bei volti honest'e cari : from 4th book of madrigals for 4 voices / Arcadelt.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-380) and index.

The compact disc includes music from China, Japan, Korea, India, and Italy; the pieces from China are from a historic recording (1926) of kun qu. Performers include: Yuan Anpu, vocal; Newberry Consort, Mary Springfels, director; Consort of Musick, Anthony Rooley, director; Hirokazu Sugiura, shamisen, Kōhachiro Miyata, shakuhachi; Keiji Azechi, kokyu, Kunie Fujii, voice, shamisen; Kim Gwangsuk, voice, Jan Deokhwa, janggo; Begum Akhtar, voice, Nizamuddin Khan, tabla; Zarina Parveen, vocal, Bahadur Khan, sarangi, S. Singh, table; Chandni, vocal; Aruna Devi, vocal. Program notes and texts with English translations on p. 353-368.

ISBN:

0195170288

0195170296

OCLC:

58720701