This course will explore the notion of sacrifice as inherently linked with literary and artistic creation. Such a «linkage» would have been far from obvious for writers (and readers) prior to 1800. The new notion of a necessary or «fatal» association between literary creation on the one hand, suffering, immolation and ultimately, self-sacrifice, on the other, rises  at the turn of the 18th and 19th c., to soon become one of the defining characters of literary writing. A unifying concept, regardless of genres or «schools», during the entire 19th century and beyond, the notion of Literature as sacrifice might well be the most salient aspect of the symbolic revolution which establishes “Literature” as we know it on the ruins of the «Belles-Lettres». Avidly embraced by 20th c. Modernity, it points to an entirely new conception of the status of the writer.