Abstract

This paper analyses the relationship between the theory of literature and the rhetoric of argumentation in La forma de la espada (Ficciones), a story by Jorge Luis Borges, by showing the importance of abductive inference as an element of fiction and trait-d'union between real perceptions, readings and cultural models. The essay underlines that there are various textual logic styles which rework and change con- ventional topics and literary themes, such as poetry, identity and wickedness. Ironic paradoxes and absurdities of Borges, then, gain an epistemological value: they are the radical speech that improves Mathesis of Roland Barthes: the literary way that leads to all knowledge.