Coterie

A coterie is an association between certain groups of individuals linked by an shared interest who support those which belong to their company and cabal against those which are not. Phenomenon as old as the company itself, the spirit of coterie is ready to be defended by all the means and to sacrifice all the contrary interests to its profit to put a person, a thing in credit or, on the contrary, for the décréditer.

The coteries political, religious, scientific, sacrifice the public property, the truth and justice to preserve the honor or the profits of an acquired situation. In policy, the coterie is with the party what the sect is with the religion. The literature also knew literary sets, dedicated to support the reputation of their members at the expense of the good sense and the taste, which shared, with their interests, of the maxims agreed upon, passed for the state of principles, of the prejudices being able to be as sincere as contrary with the reason. It happened that several of them think, while defending their cause, to defend that of the Juste, truth and beautiful. The means having always justified, for the coteries, the end, when the policy or the religion was concerned, this one did not hesitate to resort to the persecution of the dissidents. When it is only about literature, the coteries have recourse to the cabals. Each century saw them his and it, with its living rooms, its hotels, its lanes, its academies, saw the famous ones.

There, each coterie has its arrangements

Each one made there shopping and of friends and lovers
Delille, Three Reigns , III

Molière made fun of the literary sets in Invaluable ridiculous the , the Misanthropist and the erudite Women . In those, it shows with work an academy forming its payments, of which here the last word (act III , Sc 2):

We will be, by our laws, the judges of the works;

By our laws, prose and towards, all will be subjected to us:
No one will not have a spirit; out us and our friends.
We will seek everywhere to find to repeat,
And will see only us who can write well.

Internal bonds

coterie

Sources

  • Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 532
  • Maurice Block, general Dictionary of the policy , T. I , Paris, O. Lorenz, 1873, p. 541

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