In the actual European context, the intercultural competence is becoming one of the priorities in language teaching. The paper tries to analyse and sum up the importance and efficiency of this competence when it comes to working with a literary text. In spite of the fact that literature and literary text in itself has its fixed place in French language textbooks, methodologic material and teacher handbooks show clearly that intercultural competence is getting but minimum attention when analysing extracts from French poetry or novel.