Ironically, it is the second (and not the first!) issue of e-sharp that deals with new beginnings, pioneers, new routes, quests, and trailblazers. The topic, borrowed from the second GSAH annual conference, does, however, signal the opening of eSharp's new boundaries, with the inclusion of a new Social Sciences input in the journal, both at editorial level and from contributors. In particular, it is with the greatest excitement that we welcome the new editors on board and wish them a safe journey along the often 'perilous' routes of postgraduate studies.

Officially, e-sharp began its own journey only on October 31st 2003, when its founders pioneered the launch of its first issue. But that was only the end of a long journey, started with the organisation of Magic 2002, the first annual GSAH conference, which eventually led to the creation of an on-line journal run by Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences postgraduates for postgraduates at the University of Glasgow: e-sharp. I said that the first launch of e-sharp was the end of a long a process. It was. But the night of Halloween 2003 marked also a new beginning, the voyage towards a fresh, sparkling, vibrant academic life at the University of Glasgow. Does this sound too pretentious or self-conceited? Then we must rephrase ourselves. The only aim of e-sharp is in fact to open new publishing portals to postgraduate students willing to share and start a serious, lively and ultimately challenging forum for ideas. Our enthusiasm is our only force and our contributors' and readers' loyal and genuine interest in our projects the most precious reward.

This issue looks at the controversial ambiguities encrypted in the concept of 'trailblazing'. The pioneering quest initiates a new adventure and yet signals the departure from an old route. Past and present embody conflicting forces, struggling to be alive and paradoxically coexisting in the voyage, the memory, the self-reflecting moment always accompanying the journey towards the new uncharted territories.

Perhaps the most ancestral interpretation of the quest motif is the voyage of the self, as in St Augustine's Confessions, which document one of the earliest - if not the oldest - example of autobiographical writing in the Western tradition. A text which blends the search for the inner self and its bond with the Divine, the Confessions articulate the author's journey through the three elements of the map, the quest and the energy, as Augustine 'blazed the trail of a written and textually embodied self; promoting his own 'I', as a character worthy of our recognition and attention', Michael W. DeLashmutt tells us in his paper 'Augustine's Quest for the Self: A threefold journey'. Another quest for a self, or rather the search for an author, is the focus of Kate Sheila Maxwell's piece 'Authoring the Author: Innovation and Enigma in Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr.146 the Livre de Fauvel'. Discussing the ambiguities enclosed in the fourteenth century text, Maxwell suggests the possibility of radically innovative use of anagrams for authorial recognition employed in the medieval satire the Livre de Fauvel, 'a book which is innovative in many ways already, and if this implication of Charles de Valois in its production was intended, then the anagram is here used in a unique way'. The enigmas of the Livre might still be unsolved but Maxwell's fascinating arguments link the satire to the unstable political environment of fourteenth century France.

A staged political stability, heavily controlled by media, Putin's Russia is the background for Alison Swain's research focussing on the role played by the Komsomol, the Union of Communist youth, in a post-Communist twenty-first century Russia. Struggling to express its ideas against the government's censorship and trying to survive and regenerate itself as a new political force longing for nothing but a 'just society', the Komsomol have pioneered alternative methods of political propaganda, including the less controlled internet: 'Despite the discouragement of manipulated media and election results and the 'unfashionable' image of the CPRF, the members of the Komsomol are enthusiastically engaging in modern methods of communication and agitation to keep political debate alive, from the Communist perspective, on the internet and on the streets when other forms of communication are censored'. More focus on Soviet studies comes from Stephanie Mckendry's paper 'Rudolf Schlesinger and His Role in the Development of British Soviet Studies'. One of the first people to join the Communist Party in Austria in 1918, Schlesinger's life reveals his activist role in the development of Communist thinking across and pioneering position in the establishment of Soviet Studies in Scotland. As Mckendry's emphasises: 'the author of hundreds of publications, this leading authority on Soviet matters went on to found two distinguished journals and helped establish Soviet studies as an academic discipline within the UK. Schlesinger was a trailblazer as a revolutionary and as a creator'.

The politics of gender and post-colonial theory are behind Nalini Paul's analysis of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. 'Other Ways of Looking: The Female Gaze in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea' employs critical stances from film studies, postcolonial and gender theory to ask questions about the ambiguously subversive core of Rhys's text. In particular, Paul argues against the gender categorization implicit in mainstream feminist theory, failing to represent the point of view or 'the gaze' of the marginal minorities and the relevance of race within gender: 'In the language of mainstream feminist film theory, "women" or "woman" is used as a universalising category that applies to white women only, without recognising its exclusion of other races. Hence white women come to represent women in general or "woman", that is, all women'.

Paul's focus on the problematic of gender difference and racial boundaries establishes a link with the two other papers concerned with mapping and retracing of borderlines. Yumi Yakota's 'What You See Is Not Necessarily What You Get: A Caveat for Scandinavian Place-name Evidence' demonstrates the ambiguities of place naming of a Scandinavian origin. The coalescence of different and yet similar languages and cultures may have blurred geographical and political borderlines as cultural influences would often overlap: 'place-names are thus likely to reflect the predominant nature or nationality of a district, which was felt by people in the adjacent areas [...] Given that the Scandinavian and English languages shared certain characteristics from the beginning, it is not difficult to assume that the languages of the natives and settlers were at times easily intermingled, ultimately making interpretation of the origin of place-names extremely difficult'. And the mapping of memories constitutes one of the themes explored by Tudor Balinisteanu's 'The Spectator's Pleasure: Yeats's Long-legged Fly', a fascinating reading of W.B. Yeats's Long Legged Fly, focussing on the poet's inner journey through the realm of inner memories and universal speculations: Yeats' Long-legged Fly bears the mark of the modernist conception of the processes of the mind whereby memory serves as the locus where identity is deposited: 'of the individual, but more importantly, collective identity'. Balinisteanu's analysis of the innovative angles of Yeats's modernist poetry endorses the essence of all the diverging paths undertaken by the trailblazers of e-sharp's second issue.

Whichever path you may choose, maybe a different route each time, do not forget to enjoy your journey!

eSharp issue: spring 2004. ISSN 1742-4542.