Book launch ‘Doing Things With Literature: A Toolkit’ (Legenda Selected Essays, 2026)

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Translations of the work of Alain Viala, edited by Jessica Goodman (St Catherine’s College, Oxford) Emma Herdman (St Andrews University), Marine Roussillon (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Gemma Tidman (Queen Mary University of London)

This toolkit, edited by Jessica Goodman, Emma Herdman, Marine Roussillon, and Gemma Tidman, presents a selection of essays and articles by one of the foremost French literary critics of his generation, Alain Viala, translated into English for the first time. The volume illustrates the remarkable breadth of Viala’s work, bridging centuries, genres, and disciplines, but also — and crucially for its users — it offers a set of multi-purpose tools for doing things with literature. Longer-form essays sit alongside shorter, dictionary-style definitions of keywords in Viala’s literary lexicon: ‘adherence’, ‘history’, and of course ‘literature’, among others. Seasoned scholars and new students alike will discover Viala’s pioneering approach to what literature is, why it matters, and how to write about it (with both a cool head and a warm touch). Viala unlocks a world in which literature is but one among many mutually-influential and politically powerful social practices — teaching, quarrelling, publishing, performing, reforming… Far from spelling the death of literature, this unique approach shows how, with the right tools, we can all give new life to even the most well-worn objects.

Alain Viala (1947-2021) was the author of over twenty books and more than one-hundred-and-fifty articles, most notably on early modern authorship (Naissance de l’écrivain, 1985), theatre (especially Racine, whose complete works he edited), and ‘la galanterie’ (La France galante (2008) and La Galanterie (2019)). He held professorships in eight different countries (including his permanent posts at Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Oxford) and was a passionate advocate for the value of literary culture, for both students and the broader public.