AustLit

Carmen Lawrence says: I'm not suggesting that writers or critics should crank out polemic, but that they should not underestimate the power of literature to chip away at orthodox ways of thinking; that they celebrate the power they have to insinuate new images into our repertoire. Works of literature can provoke us to question accepted verities and can show us that there are always alternatives; that descriptions of reality are only tentative and that a final understanding of the way things are isn't possible -- or even desirable. For me, as a reader, what remains intoxicating is that through literature I am provoked into seditious perceptions that erode my certainties and settled doctrines.'