Proust, fuir l’oralité pour trouver un accent

Abstract

Proust has always asserted that salon conversation is incompatible with the noiseless shrine where a writer devotes himself to literature. Nonetheless, the more Proust confines himself in his cork-lined room to escape the transient voices of the world, the more ‘orality’ emerges from his writing as the
equivalent not of ‘voice’, but rather of ‘accent’. In this paper I investigate this paradox by examining the episode concerning Bergotte’s voice, which seems so eccentric to the narrator.