Late Ming Xizi Lake: the courtesan world in the landscape culture of the West Lake

Abstract

The present article has the aim of examining the relationship between the landscape culture of Hangzhou’s West Lake and the world of Late Ming courtesans. This will analyse how the landscape culture was ambiguous toward the world of courtesans. On one hand it reinforced the values of that world, providing a network of spaces and activities for their implementation; on the other it offered ways in which such values could be questioned or even used by the courtesans themselves to progress in the world of culture, abandoning their status for a more socially acceptable one.