About
The New Trad journal will be an ongoing experiment in contemporary engagement with traditional, especially ancient, literary forms. Our premise is that the stylistic innovations of the twentieth century, whether in high modernist seriousness or postmodern irony, have exhausted themselves and given way to the empty repetition of once-radical gestures. One can hardly leaf through a literary textbook or attend a seminar without encountering the same formulations in praise of the transgressive: blurring the boundaries, disrupting the linear narrative, confounding the reader’s expectations.
It is our conviction that genuine innovation can no longer be produced out of a desire for novelty: that moment is passed. It is, on the contrary, by vigorous encounters with its roots, both creatively and critically, that culture is refreshed. We should emphasise that we refer here not to the recent pre-modernist past, but to the ancient roots of literature. Think Lönnrot, Wagner, or Walcott’s Omeros—not James McAuley.
The New Trad Journal is our contribution to that effort. This website is a temporary placeholder. We will replace it with a more informative and full-featured one once we have drawn up a manifesto and determined the theme for the first issue.
If you’d like to be involved with the project, please get in touch via our contact form (or follow us on Twitter).