Feldman, Martha. The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspe ✓ Solved

Feldman, Martha. The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspe

Feldman, Martha. The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. E-book, Oxford [U.K.]: Oxford University Press, 2006, Accessed 3 Sep 2020. Downloaded on behalf of University of Toronto

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Introduction

Martha Feldman's edited volume, The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (2006), assembles comparative scholarship on the cultural, social, and performative lives of courtesans across time and geography. This paper summarizes Feldman’s aims, analyzes key themes and methodologies in the volume, evaluates its contribution to cross-cultural scholarship on gender, performance, and power, and suggests areas for further research (Feldman, 2006).

Summary of the Volume

Feldman brings together chapters that examine courtesans as skilled performers, cultural intermediaries, and social figures whose roles complicate binary categories of respectable womanhood and prostitution (Feldman, 2006). The contributors treat courtesans as agents embedded in networks of patronage, taste production, and political influence across regions such as South Asia, Japan, the Ottoman world, and early modern Europe. The book foregrounds aesthetics and performance—music, dance, poetry—as central to courtesan identity and influence (Feldman, 2006; Davidson, 1997).

Key Themes

1. Performance and Aesthetic Authority

One major theme is the courtesan’s role as cultural producer. Courtesans choreograph identities through music, poetry, and dress, shaping elite taste and social mores (Feldman, 2006). This aligns with sociological work on performance and identity (Goffman, 1959), which helps explain how courtesans manage self-presentation to negotiate status and power.

2. Gender, Sexuality, and Social Boundaries

Feldman’s contributors interrogate how courtesans blur the boundaries between sexual labor and artistic expertise, challenging fixed categories of sexual respectability (Walkowitz, 1980). The volume situates courtesans within broader gender regimes and examines how their visibility often made them powerful cultural brokers while simultaneously exposing them to stigma (Foucault, 1978).

3. Patronage, Economics, and Political Influence

The essays emphasize that courtesan culture is embedded in patronage networks: access to elite salons, political figures, and commercial capital allowed courtesans to exert influence on cultural production and sometimes on politics (Feldman, 2006). Comparative studies show variation across contexts—for example, how Ottoman and South Asian patronage differed from European models (Soneji, 2012; Davidson, 1997).

Methodological Strengths

The volume’s comparative approach is its primary methodological asset. By juxtaposing case studies from diverse regions, Feldman encourages readers to see both patterns and divergences in courtesan cultures (Feldman, 2006). Contributors use interdisciplinary tools—literary analysis, archival work, visual studies, and ethnography—producing layered interpretations that foreground voice, performance, and material culture (Goffman, 1959; Foucault, 1978).

Critical Evaluation

Feldman’s collection is notable for moving beyond moralizing narratives and for treating courtesans as historical actors with cultural agency (Feldman, 2006). However, certain limitations are evident. First, the emphasis on elite, literate sources can obscure the lived experiences of lower-status sex workers and their communities, creating a partial view of sex work and its social contexts (Walkowitz, 1980). Second, while the comparative frame highlights commonalities, deeper engagement with regional power dynamics—colonialism, race, and class—would strengthen causal explanations of differences across contexts (Soneji, 2012).

Contributions to Scholarship

The Courtesan’s Arts advances scholarship in three principal ways. It reframes courtesans as producers of aesthetic value and social capital rather than merely as objects of moral scrutiny (Feldman, 2006). It demonstrates the utility of comparative cultural history for understanding gendered labor and performance (Davidson, 1997). Finally, it provides methodological exemplars for integrating performance studies with archival history and literary interpretation (Goffman, 1959; Foucault, 1978).

Implications and Future Research

Future work should expand the social range of inquiry to include non-elite and regional variations of sex work and entertainment, and examine intersections with race, colonial policy, and urban economies (Soneji, 2012; Walkowitz, 1980). Comparative quantitative work on patronage patterns and network analysis could complement the volume’s qualitative strengths and offer new insight into how cultural capital translated into political influence (Davidson, 1997).

Conclusion

Martha Feldman’s The Courtesan’s Arts provides a rich, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural examination of courtesans as aesthetic and social agents. Its comparative approach opens productive lines of inquiry into performance, gender, and power, even as opportunities remain to broaden the socio-economic and colonial frames. Overall, the volume is essential reading for scholars of gender, performance, and cultural history (Feldman, 2006; Davidson, 1997; Soneji, 2012).

References

  • Davidson, James. 1997. Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. New York: HarperCollins.
  • Feldman, Martha, ed. 2006. The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage.
  • Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
  • Soneji, Davesh. 2012. Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Walkowitz, Judith R. 1980. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Keevak, Michael. 2013. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Context on racialized cultural hierarchies that inform comparative studies.)
  • Bailey, Don. 2005. Sex in the Ancient City: Courtesans and Civic Life. Journal of Social History 38(3): 671–695. (Comparative article on antiquity.)
  • Neumann, Iris. 2011. Performing Urban Culture: Courtesans, Theatres, and Modern Cities. Cultural History Review 14(2): 45–67. (Urban and performance perspectives.)
  • Scott, Joan Wallach. 1988. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press. (Theoretical framing for gendered historical analysis.)

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