Posted: September 18th, 2025 | No Comments »Pauline Yu’s Chinese Songs in a French Key: How Judith Gautier’s Book of Jade Introduced Europe to Chinese Poetry (Columbia University Press)…. 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.