'Thus, in the brief and crude account I give, did it come about that biblical scholarship and studies in Greek and Roman antiquity came to be coupled in a relationship never without antagonism, and thus did it come about that textual scholarship and its attendant disciplines came to fall under the rubric "the humanities".

'So much for history. So much for why you, diverse and ill-assorted as you may privately feel yourselves to be, find yourselves assembled this morning under a single roof as graduates-to-be in the humanities. Now, in the few minutes left to me, I am going to tell you why I do not belong among you and have no message of comfort to bring to you, despite the generosity of the gesture you have extended to me.

'The message I bring is that you lost your way long ago, perhaps as long as five centuries ago. The handful of men among whom the movement originated of which you represent, I fear, the sad tail – those men were animated, at least at first, by the purpose of finding the True Word, by which they understood then, and I understand now, the redemptive word.

'That word cannot be found in the classics, whether you understand the classics to mean Homer and Sophocles or whether you understand them to mean Homer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky In a happier age than our own it was possible for people to bluff themselves into believing that the classics of antiquity offered a teaching and a way of life. In our own times we have settled, rather desperately, for the claim that the study of the classics in itself might offer a way of life, or if not a way of life then at least a way of earning a living which, if it cannot be proved to do any positive good, at least is on no side claimed to do any harm.

'But the impulse behind the first generation of textual scholars cannot be diverted so easily from its proper goal. I am a daughter of the Catholic Church, not of the Reformed Church, but I applaud Martin Luther when he turns his back on Desiderius Erasmus, judging that his colleague, despite his immense gifts, has been seduced into branches of study that do not, by the standards of the ultimate, matter. The studia humanitatis have taken a long time to die, but now, at the end of the second millennium of our era, they are truly on their deathbed. All the more bitter should be that death, I would say, since it has been brought about by the monster enthroned by those very studies as first and animating principle of the universe: the monster of reason, mechanical reason. But that is another story for another day.'

That is the end of it, the end of Blanche's oration, which is received less with applause than with what sounds, from the front row of seats, like a murmur of general puzzlement. The business of the day is resumed: one by one the new graduates are called up to receive their scrolls; and the ceremony closes with a formal procession of which Blanche, in her red robes, is part. Then she, Elizabeth, is free for a while to wander among the milling guests, listening in on their chatter.

That chatter turns out to be mainly about the inordinate length of the ceremony. It is only in the foyer that she hears specific mention of Blanche's address. A tall man with an ermine-trimmed gown over his arm is talking heatedly to a woman in black. 'Who does she think she is,' he is saying, 'using the occasion to lecture us! A missionary from the sticks in Zululand – what does she know about the humanities? And this hard Catholic line – what has happened to ecumenicism?'

She is a guest – a guest of the university, a guest of her sister's, a guest in the country too. If these people want to take umbrage, that is their right. It is not for her to get involved. Let Blanche fight her own battles.

But not getting involved turns out to be less easy than that. A formal luncheon has been scheduled, and she has been invited. When she takes her seat, she finds herself next to the same tall man, who has in the meantime got rid of his medieval costume. She has no appetite, there is a knot of nausea in her stomach, she would prefer to be back in her hotel room having a lie-down, but she makes an effort. 'Let me introduce myself she says. 'I am Elizabeth Costello. Sister Bridget is my sister. Sister by blood, I mean.'

Elizabeth Costello. She can see that the name means nothing to him. His own name is on the place card before him: Professor Peter Godwin.

'I presume you teach here,' she goes on, making conversation. 'What do you teach?'

'I teach literature, English literature.'

'It must have cut close to the bone, what my sister was saying. Well, don't mind her. She is a bit of a battleaxe, that's all. She likes a good fight.'

Blanche, Sister Bridget, the battleaxe, is sitting at the other end of the table, wrapped up in a conversation of her own. She cannot hear them.

'This is a secular age,' replies Godwin. 'You cannot turn back the clock. You cannot condemn an institution for moving with the times.'

'By an institution you mean the university?'

Yes, universities, but specifically faculties of humanities, which remain the core of any university.'

The humanities the core of the university. She may be an outsider, but if she were asked to name the core of the university today, its core discipline, she would say it was moneymaking. That is how it looks from Melbourne, Victoria; and she would not be surprised if the same were the case in Johannesburg, South Africa.

'But was that really what my sister was saying: that you should turn back the clock? Wasn't she saying something more interesting, more challenging – that there has been something misconceived in the study of the humanities from the start? Something wrong with placing hopes and expectations on the humanities that they could never fulfil? I do not necessarily agree with her; but that was what I understood her to be arguing.'

'The proper study of mankind is man,' says Professor Godwin. 'And the nature of mankind is a fallen nature. Even your sister would agree with that. But that should not prevent us from trying – trying to improve. Your sister wants us to give up on man and go back to God. That is what I mean when I refer to turning back the clock. She wants to go back to before the Renaissance, before the humanist movement she spoke about, before even the relative enlightenment of the twelfth century. She wants us to plunge back into the Christian fatalism of what I would call the Low Middle Ages.'

'I would hesitate to say, knowing my sister, that there is anything fatalist about her. But you should speak to her yourself, put your point.'

Professor Godwin addresses himself to his salad.There is a silence. From across the table the woman in black, whom she takes to be Godwin's wife, gives her a smile. 'Did I hear you say your name is Elizabeth Costello?' she says. 'Not the writer Elizabeth Costello?'

'Yes, that is what I do for a living. I write.'

'And you are Sister Bridget's sister.'

'I am. But Sister Bridget has many sisters. I am merely a sister in blood. The others are truer sisters, sisters in spirit.'

She intends the remark lightly, but it seems to fluster Mrs Godwin. Maybe that is the reason why Blanche raises people's hackles here: she uses words like spirit and God inappropriately, in places where they do not belong. Well, she is not a believer, but in this case she thinks she will stand with Blanche.

Mrs Godwin is speaking to her husband, flashing him looks. 'Elizabeth Costello the writer, dear,' she is saying.

'Oh yes,' says Professor Godwin; but clearly the name rings no bell.

'My husband is in the eighteenth century,' says Mrs Godwin.

'Ah yes. A good place to be. The Age of Reason.'

'I do not believe we see the period in quite so uncomplicated a way nowadays,' says Professor Godwin. He seems to be about to say more, but then does not.

Conversation with the Godwins is clearly flagging. She turns to the person on her right, but he is deeply engaged elsewhere.

'When I was a student,' she says, turning back to the Godwins, 'which would have been around 1950, we read a lot of D. H. Lawrence. Of course we read the classics too, but that was not where our real energy went. D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot – those were the writers we pored over. Perhaps Blake in the eighteenth century. Perhaps Shakespeare, because as we all know Shakespeare transcends his time. Lawrence gripped us because he promised a form of salvation. If we worshipped the dark gods, he told us, and carried out their observances, we would be saved. We believed him. We went out and worshipped the dark gods as best we were able, from the hints that Mr Lawrence let drop. Well, our worship did not save us. A false prophet, I would call him now, in retrospect.

'What I mean to say is that in our truest reading, as students, we searched the page for guidance, guidance in perplexity. We found it in Lawrence, or we found it in Eliot, the early Eliot: a different kind of guidance, perhaps, but guidance nevertheless in how to live our lives. The rest of our reading, by comparison, was just a matter of mugging things up so that we could pass exams.

'If the humanities want to survive, surely it is those energies and that craving for guidance that they must respond to: a craving that is, in the end, a quest for salvation.'

She has spoken a great deal, more than she meant to. In fact, in the silence that now falls, she sees that others have been listening in. Even her sister is turned towards her.

We did not realize,' says the Dean loudly from the head of the table, 'when Sister Bridget asked us to invite you to this happy event, that it was the Elizabeth Costello we would have in our midst. Welcome. We are delighted to have you.'

'Thank you,' she says.

'I could not help catching some of what you were saying,' the Dean continues. 'Do you then agree with your sister that the outlook for the humanities is dark?'

She must be careful how she treads. 'I was merely saying,' she says, 'that our readers – our young readers in particular – come to us with a certain hunger, and if we cannot or will not satisfy their hunger then we must not be surprised if they turn away from us. But my sister and I are in different lines of business. She has told you what she thinks. For my own part, I would say that it is enough for books to teach us about ourselves. Any reader ought to be content with that. Or almost any reader.'

They are watching her sister to see how she reacts. Teaching us about ourselves: what else is that but Studium humanitatis?

'Is this just a conversation over luncheon,' says Sister Bridget, 'or are we being serious?'

'We are being serious,' says the Dean. 'We are serious.'