Towards a purpose and a direction

The overriding question of this lecture is how, from digital humanities as now is, we might make something of worth the candle intellectually. That it has succeeded institutionally is mostly beyond doubt, though not beyond the need for watchful maintenance and defence. But how can digital humanities begin to realise the potential its powerful amalgam of the natural, social and human sciences adumbrates? The multiple question-generating answer offered here is this: not by copying others or by allowing their pre-packaged methods and perspectives to seep in, rather by seeking interdisciplinary help from all the disciplines and ways of life on whose concerns our field touches, embraces, interpenetrates – imaginative literature and the arts among them.