Chinese Songs in a French Key

Reviews / Votes

In Chinese Songs in a French Key, Pauline Yu masterfully and suspensefully uncovers the remarkable story of Judith Gautier, the French translator, novelist, poet, and essayist who was responsible for introducing Paris and the West to Chinese poetry and for influencing the nineteenth-century artistic and literary imagination. Yu's evocative portrait of Gautier is at once an inspiration and a revelation. -- Elizabeth Birkelund, author of <i>A Northern Light in Provence: A Novel</i> This book deals not only with Gautier's Book of Jade-it paints a richly colored portrait of late-nineteenth-century French culture, the emerging world of Chinese studies in Europe, and much more. Yu deftly employs the double lens of Gautier's books and her life through which to explore the impact of both, moving among biographical, cultural, and literary frames with grace. -- Anna M. Shields, author of <i>One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China</i> The Book of Jade, a volume of poems published in 1867 by "Judith Walter," astounded the French literary world. Was it Chinese poetry in French translation? Was its pseudonymous creator the author or the translator? Pauline Yu brilliantly illuminates the history, mysteries, "outsized influence, and robust afterlife" of this extraordinary work. -- Jean Strouse, author of <i>Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers</i> Impressive both in its presentation of French and European society and (especially literary) culture at the time, including how the foreign was regarded, as well as in how it presents and addresses many aspects of the question of translation. With a fascinating cast of characters as well, it's also very entertaining. * The Complete Review * It is in these pages of lucid elucidation and gentle, considered evaluations of the art of translations, that the book truly shines. * Open Letters Review *