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What is that unmistakable spark of newness in an artwork that can reach us across historical, geographic and cultural distance? 

In March 2008 the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº English Department's sixth annual graduate conference addressed the topic 'The Idea of the New: Discovery, Expression, and Reception'. In an article adapted from his keynote address at the conference, Derek Attridge examines this specific question and asks what that spark of recognition can tell us about our responsibility as readers and critics. In doing so he leads us to the important difference between 'originality' - that which ensures immediate local recognition of newness, and 'invention' - that eternal freshness Ezra Pound calls for when he describes literature as 'news that STAYS news'. 

Issue Four of Moveable Type continues the journal's tradition of publishing a selection of the papers given at the Engish Department graduate conference. Many of the articles in this issue engage directly with the idea of artistic originality. Moving from seventeenth-century France to postcolonial Australia, stopping off in early nineteenth-century Spain, Modernist Europe, and South America in the 1960s, they examine the immediate circumstances of artistic production in order to highlight what made these works truly original and distinctive. When reading these articles, however, what becomes obvious is that their examinations are ultimately in service of the quality that enables these works to speak, in voices that are both strange and new, across cultural and historical divides. 

In 2007 Moveable Type established a strong connection with the Special Collections digital archive of ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Library Services. In 2008 we continue to develop this relationship, and the collection has generously provided several new images, particularly in the area of modernist art and design, that offer interesting juxtapositions with the articles they illustrate.

Diversity of content distinguishes this issue. The reader travels many miles, across many continents and many centuries, to inhabit lives as distinct as that of Australian Aboriginal writer Sally Morgan, and the recusant English nun Margaret Gascoigne. This diversity reflects the energy and variety in dialogue at this year's conference. The articles, as well as the reviews of recent work collected here, are alive to the moments of cross-pollination that occur when traditions and cultures collide - and the new models for national, personal and artistic identity that result. In re-presenting this cross-section of current scholarship and opinion we hope to recreate the excitement of these moments. 

Anna Smaill and Nick Shepley, 2008 editors