Alongside the traditional theoretical or historical question: "What is literature?", a critical and political question arises with greater urgency today: "What can literature do?" What value do contemporary society and culture attribute to literature? What use is it? What role does it play? "My confidence in the future of literature," declared Calvino, "rests on the certainty that there are things that only literature can give us." Is this still our credo?
Antoine Compagnon, La littérature, pour quoi faire? [2007], Paris, Collège de France, coll. "Leçons inaugurales du Collège de France", n° 188, September 2013.
