Abstract
Within a dialectic between the visible and the invisible, the invisible library essentially corresponds to a mental library. Moreover, the latter represents the most general case of the library form. Whether on an individual or collective level, every material library emerges from an invisible library, as shown by a recent example: the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
While a visible library is a collection of texts, the invisible library is a collection of works of a linguistic nature, of which an individual or group may have a more or less distinct awareness or representation. In the context of this definition, the notion of work corresponds to a text actualized in the mind by reading, to the mental image of a work of language (in the sense of cognitive philosophy and psychology).
The recent history of literary criticism has commented at length on the difference between fact and fiction. But if this distinction between fact and fiction is of major interest from a philosophical, legal, ethical and political point of view, it is less so in the case of literature, insofar as literary works sometimes move us more than reality itself. The question of the significance of literary works has been the supreme question of literary criticism since its very beginnings.
