La Séparation tragique: les lieux et l’espace dans Médée, Bérénice et Ariane

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This article analyses the mise en scène, or rather the mise en espace, of amorous separation in three seventeenth-century tragedies: Médée by Pierre Corneille (1635), Bérénice by Racine (1670) and Ariane by Thomas Corneille (1672). How is the tragic love of these three heroines – each so different, yet all abandoned by their lovers – inscribed into the theatrical space and the multiple geographies evoked in the tragedies? An examination of fictional places on and off stage demonstrates how the place represented on stage functions as a transitional place: while it should represent the union of the couple, it actually prepares for their separation as it opens onto the vast spaces of a past and a future lived elsewhere.