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This article reflects on the identity of literary studies; it asks in particular whether they can be defined as a “discipline”. After making a distinction between research “discipline” and “institutional discipline”, it brings to the fore the ambiguity of the situation of traditional specialists of literature: they are always referring to norms of human and social sciences, but at the same time disqualify them. Claiming to be legitimated by their hermeneutic relationship to prestigious texts, they consider all other dimensions of literature as peripheral. In these circumstances, we have to recognize that literature can be apprehended in two different ways: one is hermeneutic; it is a consequence of the privileged status of literature, which is a component of the Thesaurus of a society. The other is that of human and social sciences, in which case researchers aim at finding out the functioning of literary productions which must be studied in their full diversity.