Acting through literature. Ethical intention put to the test by practices used to teach texts. The aim of this article is to show the issues involved when thinking about ethics in the teaching of literature, based on the practices we observed during our empirical research. The question of ethics is not addressed from the point of view of values which are defined a priori through curricula and which have to be transmitted, but pragmatically as the result of day-to-day discussions in the classroom. We firmly believe that interaction with an ethical purpose would be more efficient if it were also seen as a transaction.