Research Catalog

Title

Yellow : the history of a color / Michel Pastoureau ; translated by Jody Gladding.

Author

Pastoureau, Michel, 1947-

Publication

• Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2019]
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Gladding, Jody, 1955-

Description

240 pages : color illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Illuminated with a wide variety of images, this book traces the long history of yellow around the world. In antiquity, yellow was considered a sacred color, a symbol of light, warmth, wealth, and prosperity. But in medieval Europe, it became highly ambivalent: greenish yellow came to signify demonic sulfur and bile, the color of forgers, felon knights, traitors, Judas, and Lucifer--while warm yellow recalled honey and gold, serving as a sign of joy, pleasure and abundance. The yellow stars of the Holocaust were seared into the color's negative tradition. In Europe today, yellow has diminished to a discreet color. Greenish yellow can still be seen as dangerous, sickly, or poisonous, and golden yellow remains positive, but the color is absent in much of everyday life and is lacking in symbolism. In Asia, however, yellow pigments like ocher and orpiment and dyes like saffron, curcuma, and gaude are abundant. Painting and dyeing in this color has been easier than in Europe, offering a richer and more varied palette of yellows that has granted the color a more positive meaning. In ancient China, for example, yellow clothing was reserved for the emperor. In India, the color is seen as a source of happiness: wearing a little yellow is believed to keep evil away. And importantly, it is the color of Buddhism, whose temple doors are marked with the color. Yellow continues to have different meanings in different cultural traditions, but in most, the color remains associated with light and sun, something that can be seen from afar and that seems warm and always in motion"--

Uniform Title

Jaune. English

Alternative Title

Jaune.

Subject

• Yellow
• Color > Psychological aspects > History
• Color > Social aspects > History
• Symbolism of colors > History
• Yellow in art

Note

• "First published in the French language by Éditions du Seuil, Paris, under the title Jaune: Histoire d'une Couleur by Michel Pastoureau, copyright © 2019, Éditions du Seuil, Paris"--Verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

• A beneficial color -- An ambiguous color -- An unpopular color.
• A beneficial color (from earliest times to the fifth century). The ochers of the Paleolithic period -- The yellow metal -- Mythologies of gold -- Sun worship -- Dyeing in yellow -- Dressing in yellow -- The Clodius Affair -- The lessons of the lexicon -- The silence of the Bible and the church fathers -- An ambiguous color (sixth to fifteen centuries). The absence of yellow in Christian worship -- Yellow in heraldry -- An ambivalent symbolism -- The prestige of blond hair -- Bile and urine -- Envy, lying, and treachery -- The robes of Jan Hus and of Judas -- The origins of the yellow star? -- An unpopular color (fourteenth to twenty-first centuries). The yellow of painters -- The yellow of scholars -- Yellow in daily life -- Dictionaries and encyclopedias -- The East comes into fashion -- Discretion, transgression, and modernity -- On the margin of yellow: orange -- On the athletic fields -- Yellow for the present day.

Call Number

JQE 23-405

ISBN

• 9780691198255
• 069119825X

LCCN

40029637887

OCLC

1336709733

Author

Pastoureau, Michel, 1947- author.

Title

Yellow : the history of a color / Michel Pastoureau ; translated by Jody Gladding.

Publisher

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2019]

Copyright Date

©2019

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Added Author

Gladding, Jody, 1955- translator.

Other Standard Identifier

40029637887

Research Call Number

JQE 23-405