The Place of Literature in Society

Abstract

(Transcript of an informal lecture given at an ELLA Seminar at James
Cook University, 29th September 1973)

Whether literature has a place in society and exactly what that place is are questions to which there is no final answer. That does not mean the questions are not worth asking. Unanswerable questions are sometimes the most valuable : they force us to examine our hidden motives for doing things, to analyse our prejudices and convictions, to clean up the undergrowth which always threatens to suffocate human institutions and practices, particularly one like literature, whose value seems, to some of us who are students, so self-evident.