ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the understanding of orality developed by Walter Qng in the seminal study Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Qrality and textuality could be discussed through the development of characters such as Charlus and Brichot, both able salon conversationalists. The chapter discusses the Narrator's mother's reading from François le Champi, the literary conversation with Albertine and aspects of narrative technique in the cycle d'Albertine as a whole. The successive interventions of Albertine prove her knowledge of the authors the Narrator is talking about, as well as her ability to test him on the points he makes, obliging him on occasion to admit the limitations of his arguments. There are a number of ways in which the topic of orality can be discussed in relation to Proust's novel, depending on the way in which the term itself is defined.
