Rime et action dans la tragédie française Racine, Corneille, Hugo Étienne ÉVRARD, Gérald PURNELLE Abstract. This paper studies e1even tragedies by Racine, four by Comeillc and Iwo by Hugo. Ali of them are written with the twelve-syllablcs verse callcd "alexandrin", The system of rhymes associates the verses by pairs, which fonn kinds of distichs. Wc focus on the relation between the ends orthe distichs and the ends of the charactcrs' slatcments: do the latter match the end ofa distich, or the tirs! verse of il, or do they appear in the middlc of a verse? This t'calme is Ilot random: in Racine and Corneille the cnds of distichs and of statemenls match significanlly, though Hugo avoids this feature morc Frequently. After a stndy of short statemenls (Iess than Iwo vcrscs}--which arc morc nUlllcrous in Hugo thêm in both c1assical tragedians--\Ve find that, in Racine and Corneille, specifie textual en dramatical eftècts, like questions, appear oftell when the end of a long statement is not associated \Vith the end of a distich. At the opposite, when a question is a rhetorical question, it ends more frequently with Ihe second verse ofa dislich. These facts don 't occur in Hugo. Keywords: Racine (Jean), Corneille (Pierre), i\lots~c1és : Racine (Jean), Corneille (Pierre), Hugo (Victor), tragcdy, verse, rhyme. Hugo (Victor), tragédie, métrique. 0.0. Relisant Phèdre de Racine sans aucune intention de recherche, nous avons eu plusieurs fois l'impression que le jeu des rimes ...