Editors’ Letters

Valentina Daughton
Editor-in-Chief

Tradition is a funny thing. Sometimes we balk from it, sometimes we embrace it. Sometimes we partake in it even with a mix of pleasure and some abashment. It seems that for the majority of students in twenty-first century Britain, our response to tradition is firmly rooted in its context.

For example, there is a difference in how we view our cultural traditions and how we, for instance, respond slightly more facetiously to the academic/collegiate traditions of a ‘traditional’ university like Durham. I find it fascinating how tradition has so many facets, and in turn elicits such a variety of reactions. All within one person.

In consideration of this, we wanted this issue to be an exploration of both pride and of humility: of the eternal, amusing ambiguity of practices of tradition – be that academic, cultural, family, or religious. We wish to ask how it is that one may approach one tradition with pride and another with ambivalence or even derision.

Happy reading!

Rory McAlpine,
Editor-in-Chief

Tradition is not only about what has come before but how what comes after relates to what came before. Is tradition upheld dogmatically, subverted or entirely changed? And in these ways writing is intimately concerned with tradition, both in how literary convention and traditions are upheld, played with or abandoned and in asking us to reflect on the meaning of tradition of itself. For tradition can serve as inspiration by following it or equally rebelling against it.

For this issue tradition has been explored in a myriad of different ways and I urge you to reflect on how these pieces engage with, and ask you to engage with, tradition. To reflect on the role of writing in keeping tradition alive, challenging tradition and birthing new ones. Because just because something has always been done a certain way does not make it right. And tradition is bound up not with just what has been done but what should be done and why. Enjoy reading.

Elizabeth Dutton,
Deputy-editor-in-chief

There’s something undeniably nostalgic about tradition. It has the ability to root us in memory, to connect us across generations, and to provide a sense of comfort in its familiarity. But tradition can be complicated. Just as traditions can be beautiful in their celebrations of the past, they can also be restrictive, particularly when they are upheld solely for the sake of “doing something because it’s always been done this way”.

This issue explores that complexity, mirroring the politicisation of literature throughout history, which has reflected and resisted the traditions of its time. We owe so much of our contemporary literary landscape to those who have dared to question and push against the boundaries of literary tradition, whether this be the feminists who redefined our concept of gender, or the postcolonial thinkers who sought to dismantle a Western-dominated canon. And through their resistance they only paved the way for the reclaiming and reimagining of those traditions. Literature has the power to challenge outdated traditions, to honour traditions that have been long overlooked, and to write new traditions themselves.

For me, tradition is all about a feeling. It’s about the echo of something familiar, inherited, or half-remembered. Literature can evoke this same feeling, so, as you read through this issue, I hope you pause to reflect upon your emotional response and consider what tradition means to you in this present moment. Tradition, like literature, is always evolving, and it is through reading and writing that we can recognise this, as we situate ourselves in the past, present, and future, all at once.