Pauline Yu – författare

In early 1867, a book of poems stunned the French literary world. Titled The Book of Jade, it featured Chinese calligraphy and named ancient Chinese poets as sources, leaving readers uncertain whether the collection was a translation or a French author’s invention. Though the book was published under a pseudonym, the author was quickly recognized as Judith Gautier, the young daughter of a prominent writer. Resembling neither contemporary French verse nor any conventional translation of the day, The Book of Jade opened the eyes of readers throughout Europe to classical Chinese poetry.Chinese Songs in a French Key tells the extraordinary story of the birth, rebirth, and rich afterlife of The Book of Jade. Pauline Yu traces the research and creative process behind the book, including Gautier’s collaboration with a Chinese refugee known as Tin-Tun-Ling. She shows, through juxtapositions with original Chinese texts, how Gautier’s imaginative strategies conveyed core elements of Chinese poetry to a European audience. Yu explores how the work’s influence reverberated across French letters, Anglo-American modernist poetry, and the international history of translation. The story also unfolds within Gautier’s network of luminaries—such as Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner, and John Singer Sargent—and against the backdrop of France’s “discovery” of China through scholarship and plunder. Drawing attention to Gautier’s audacity and accomplishments, this deeply researched and elegantly written book provides new perspectives on the surprising routes cultural transmission can take.

In early 1867, a book of poems stunned the French literary world. Titled The Book of Jade, it featured Chinese calligraphy and named ancient Chinese poets as sources, leaving readers uncertain whether the collection was a translation or a French author’s invention. Though the book was published under a pseudonym, the author was quickly recognized as Judith Gautier, the young daughter of a prominent writer. Resembling neither contemporary French verse nor any conventional translation of the day, The Book of Jade opened the eyes of readers throughout Europe to classical Chinese poetry.Chinese Songs in a French Key tells the extraordinary story of the birth, rebirth, and rich afterlife of The Book of Jade. Pauline Yu traces the research and creative process behind the book, including Gautier’s collaboration with a Chinese refugee known as Tin-Tun-Ling. She shows, through juxtapositions with original Chinese texts, how Gautier’s imaginative strategies conveyed core elements of Chinese poetry to a European audience. Yu explores how the work’s influence reverberated across French letters, Anglo-American modernist poetry, and the international history of translation. The story also unfolds within Gautier’s network of luminaries—such as Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner, and John Singer Sargent—and against the backdrop of France’s “discovery” of China through scholarship and plunder. Drawing attention to Gautier’s audacity and accomplishments, this deeply researched and elegantly written book provides new perspectives on the surprising routes cultural transmission can take.

"Ways with Words" presents interpretive essays by scholars from different disciplines on seven core, premodern classical Chinese texts. The remarkable diversity of these works - drawn from literature, philosophy, religion, and art history - challenges the presumption of a monolithic Chinese tradition that has been promoted by scholars and popular culture alike, both in China and the West. The texts themselves include a poem from the "Classic of Poetry" compiled in the sixth century b.c.e.; passages from "Mencius and Zhuangzi"; the "Heart Sutra"; a poem by Du Fu and the "Biography of Yingying" by Yuan Zhen, both written during the Tang dynasty; and "Notes on the Method for the Brush", a tenth-century text attributed to Jing Hao.Both the original Chinese versions and the translations are provided for each primary text. There are at least two essays - when possible from scholars in different fields - on each work. The volume as a whole demonstrates the various ways in which the modern Western reader can confront the impressive variety of texts from the classical Chinese tradition.

Many observers of late imperial China have noted the relatively small size of the state in comparison to the geographic size and large population of China and have advanced various theories to account for the ability of the state to maintain itself in power. One of the more enduring explanations has been that the Chinese state, despite its limited material capacities, possessed strong ideological powers and was able to influence cultural norms in ways that elicited allegiance and responded to the desire for order.The fourteen papers in this volume re-examine the assumptions of how state power functioned, particularly the assumption of a sharp divide between state and society. The general conclusion is that the state was only one actor—albeit a powerful one—in a culture that elites and commoners could shape, either in cooperation with the state or in competition with it. The temporal range of the papers extends from the twelfth to the twentieth century, though most of the papers deal with the Ming and Qing dynasties.The book is in four parts. Part I deals with philosophical, historiographical, and literary debates and their relation to the late imperial state; Part II with the multiple roles of officials, elites, specialists, and commoners in constructing norms of religious beliefs and practices. Part III presents criticisms by late imperial intellectuals of both state policies and social conventions, and examines official efforts to incorporate and utilize elite commitments to Confucian views of political and cultural order. Part IV discusses ways in which the twentieth-century Chinese political order emerged from a trajectory defined in part by the intersection of late imperial practices with Western categories of knowledge.