Completing the wish of the late Alain Viala, this volume presents to readers the first collection of work published by the Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l'Histoire du Litteraire (GRIHL) to be available in the English language. The volume consists of a highly diverse and interdisciplinary range of articles, that have never been published together or translated into English. The aim of the collection is not to understand what the literary is, and even less what literature is. Rather, the aim is to understand what the literary does and the ways in which it acts in - and on - a society in which it appears.