Introduction -- Chapter 1 The silence intended: some exclusions necessary for its definition -- 1. The foreseen silence -- 2. Against triviality -- 3. The silent protest -- 4. The silence of the others -- 5. The representation of silence -- 6. The present silence -- 7. The final silence -- Chapter 2 Rhetoric: state of the art -- Chapter 3 Praise of reading -- Chapter 4 Silence and its double: a history of literature or a history ofreading? -- 1. Definitions: the risk of the limits -- 2. Terms in force -- Chapter 5 Lector e-lector -- 1. The ups and downs of reading -- 2. The relevance of some antecedents: Pierre Menard, reader of the Quixote -- Chapter 6 Problems of "repeated discourse" -- 1. Other Palimpsests. The repetitive (dis)solution -- 2. Tradition and rupture: a "leitmotiv" -- 3. Technique as repetition -- 4. The aesthetics of imitation -- 5. Lexicalization of phrases -- 6. Repetition as reflection: the possible encounter between Echo and Narcissus -- Chapter 7 The (di)vision of man and the crisis of coherence -- 1. Fragile vessels -- 2. Reading of text: literature and fragments -- Chapter 8 Familiarity and strangeness: repetition-fragmentation. The narrative of Felisberto Hernández -- Chapter 9 The era of the reader -- Chapter 10 Critical avidity -- Chapter 11 «Le style c'est, au moins, deux hommes» -- Chapter 12 Every reader reads -- Chapter 13 A read reader -- Chapter 14 The rights of the reader -- Chapter 15 Solidity and precariousness of the text -- Chapter 16 Reading and interdiction -- between word and word, silence -- Chapter 17 Writing and interdiction -- Chapter 18 The reticence of the text -- Selected writings -- Borges and the invention of the name -- Finland-bound (on the way to Finland). (Between rhetorical and geometrical figures): The semiotic spectre in La muerte y la brújula by Jorge Luis Borges.

The miracle of the roses and Borges' ultrarealism -- Between two languages: Jules Laforgue, a Uruguayan "figure". Biographical and poetical notes for the study of a rhetorical figure -- 1. The background of this work -- 2. A retrospective at the beginning -- 3. The temptation of the name -- 4. Langus-lettres compared -- Anaphoric imagination in cinema: an approach to Fellini's Intervista -- Symbols as pass-words between spaces and species -- Narration under discussion: a question of angels, men, nouns and pronouns -- 1. Imitations and limitations -- 2. «Copier, c'est ne rien faire» -- 3. «Lire beacoup, lire encore, lire toujours» -- 4. «Devenir immortel et puis mourir» -- 5. From one diegesis to another -- 6. Loss of prestige -- 7. Theory of fiction -- 8. «Soeurs siamoises, séparées par la tête: la pensée et la poésie» -- 9. Repetition with a difference -- 10. Angels, hybrids, androgynous -- The paradoxes of paradoxes -- Notes -- References -- Subject index.