JEU DE MIROIRS ET OSCILLATIONS IDENTITAIRES DES BERENICE

Abstract

Alain Viala assures that the Berenices controversy is not quite one in spite of a persistent tradition of the literature history in which a quite unknown anonymous comedy of that time, 1673’s Tite et Titus should be considered. It stages this presumed dissension between the two Berenices, the Corneille’s one accusing her rival of identity usurpation by Racine. The idea of this work and its starting point arise from the questioning of this mirror effect in Racine and Corneille’s Berenices: do their characters fall under alterity, sameness or ipseity, whose concepts we take from Ricoeur? Other questions stem from it: what are the origins of the identity fluctuations, how do the Berenices match the personality of Tite or Titus in order to constitute the Racine or Corneille’s couple? Are they to be considered in the scenic permanence of Racine’s play that, in the course of time, leaves Corneille’s version far behind, while their reception at that time was only slightly in disfavor of the latter?