Staff Book and Media Recommendations

Denise Lozeau is a Library Specialist II at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues

Susan Griffin

Notes : In The Book of Courtesans, Griffin is downright scintillating. Courtesans, she writes, were not prostitutes nor even kept women, though certainly they used their sexuality to financial gain. Rather, they were personages and celebrities, friends to royalty and the most famous writers and artists of their time, the subjects of gossip, the charismatic epicenter of the Second Empire, the Gay Nineties, the Belle Epoche, "Gay Paree." Their faces were immortalized in paintings by the Renaissance masters, by Degas, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, their lives by Proust, Balzac, Zola, Flaubert. They lived in splendor, set fashion standards, owned fabulous jewelry collections. And they were talented authors, poets, actresses, and singers. In a time of prescribed roles for women, they turned the tables, creating lives of remarkable intellectual and financial freedom. Amazon Review

Review: Looking back into history from the so called sexual revolution of the late 20th century, the reader realizes that when it comes to women using and reveling in their sexuality, it is as old as time and there is nothing new under the sun. If anything, the sexual revolutions of the late have probably created an environment where women cannot truly use their sexuality to the same advantage that they did in centuries past, and now great courtesans and mistresses can only be admired as a thing of the past. Nonetheless, the book is fascinating reading and maybe something can still be learned to be used in the readers own little world.

Reviewed April 2011