59 pagesThis article is the first one of a series of three articles devoted to L-functions. In this one we give a definition of the L-functions of convergent or overconvergent F-modules with the help of Teichmüller liftings and we establish the meromorphy of the L-functions of convergent F-modules in the closed unit disk. Wan has established Dwork conjecture in a series of three articles; owing to an isogeny theorem of Katz, his proof reduces to the ordinary case: here we prove, on two explicit examples related to families of elliptic curves, that the slope filtration on an ordinary overconvergent F-module does'nt lift to an overconvergent filtration. As a by-product we show that the unit-root sub-F-isocrystal of the de Rham cohomology of t...