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Yellow: The History of a Color

Michel Pastoureau

translated by Jody Gladding

Princeton University Press, 2019

In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau—a renowned authority on the history of color and the author of celebrated volumes on blue, black, green, and red—now traces the visual, social, and cultural history of yellow. Focusing on European societies, with comparisons from East Asia, India, Africa, and South America, Yellow tells the intriguing story of the color’s evolving place in art, religion, fashion, literature, and science.

In Europe today, yellow is a discreet color, little present in everyday life and rarely carrying great symbolism. This has not always been the case. In antiquity, yellow was almost sacred, a symbol of light, warmth, and prosperity. It became highly ambivalent in medieval Europe: greenish yellow came to signify demonic sulfur and bile, the color of forgers, lawless knights, Judas, and Lucifer—while warm yellow recalled honey and gold, serving as a sign of pleasure and abundance. In Asia, yellow has generally had a positive meaning. In ancient China, yellow clothing was reserved for the emperor, while in India the color is associated with happiness. Above all, yellow is the color of Buddhism, whose temple doors are marked with it.

Throughout, Pastoureau illuminates the history of yellow with a wealth of captivating images. With its striking design and compelling text, Yellow is a feast for the eye and mind.

Other titles in the series:

Red: The History of a Color

Green: The History of a Color

Black: The History of a Color

Read The New York Review of Books September 2014 review of Green here. 

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Occupation Journal

Jean Giono

translated by Jody Gladding

Archipelago Books, 2020

Written during the years of France’s occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono’s Occupation Journal reveals the inner workings of one of France’s great literary minds during the country’s darkest hour. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s and 1940s – a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation – Giono spent the war in the town of Manosque in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his family. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Occupation Journal is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature’s most voracious and critical minds.

Also by Jean Giono, translated by Jody Gladding:

The Serpent of Stars

Finalist for the 2004 French-American Foundation Translation Prize

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Novels by author Pierre Michon, translated by Jody Gladding and Elizabeth Deshays
          (from Yale University Press, Archipelago Books):

Rimbaud the Son

Click here for an interview with Jody Gladding on translating Rimbaud the Son.

The Eleven

Winner of the 2009 Académie française Grand Prix du roman

Small Lives

Winner of the 2009 French-American Foundation Translation Prize

Click here for an essay by Elizabeth Deshays on translating Small Lives.