Teaching modern foreign languages is not all about communicative skills. It is also about testing functional abilities. While we still pay lip service to the creed of communicative language teaching, we have adopted test formats and teaching styles that follow a hidden agenda: the production of human capital. The main objective of teaching is being shifted from communicative competence to cognitive measurement. This article argues that using literature in the modern foreign language (MFL) classroom is perfectly compatible with the communicative approach and the curriculum. It highlights the fact that literature, once driven out by communicative language teaching (CLT), could now help to bring back the "communicative spirit" that is in danger of being drowned by competency-based teaching and testing.