A continuator, in literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, is a writer who creates a new work based on someone else's prior text, such as a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 or novel fragment. The new work may complete the older work (as with the various continuations of Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

's unfinished novel Sanditon

Sanditon

Sanditon , also known as Sand and Sandition is an unfinished novel by the British novelist Jane Austen.-Background:In Sanditon, Austen explored her interest in the verbal construction of a society by means of a town – and a set of families – that is still in the process of being formed...

), or may try to serve as a sequel

Sequel

A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...

 or prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 to the older work (such as Alexandra Ripley

Alexandra Ripley

Alexandra Ripley, née Braid was an American writer best known as the author of Scarlett , the sequel to Gone with the Wind. Her first novel was Who's the Lady in the President's Bed?...

's Scarlett

Scarlett (novel)

Scarlett is a novel written in 1991 by Alexandra Ripley as a sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. The book debuted on the New York Times bestsellers list, but both critics and fans of the original novel found Ripley's version to be inconsistent with the literary quality of Gone with...

, an authorized continuation of Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...

's Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

). This phenomenon differs from those authors who, because they share a common culture, use characters or themes from a common cultural stock.

History

The development of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an classical literature out of the common stock of oral tradition proved conducive, to reworkings, revisions, and satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

s. Numerous writers of Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

's golden age revived and reworked stories of the Trojan War

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 and Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, although they were not strictly continuators as, for the most part, they did not invent or even extrapolate much from the received stories, choosing to alter the tone and treatment rather than the stories.

Latin literature

Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...

, on the other hand, may be regarded as systematic continuators of Greek models. The pinnacle of Augustan

Augustan

Augustan is an adjective which means pertaining to Augustus or Augusta. It can refer to:*Augustan Age *Augustan literature *Augustan prose*Augustan poetry*Augustan Reprint Society*Augustan literature*Augustan History...

 literature, the Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

, is essentially a continuation of the Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

: not only in that it follows a minor character from his imagined origins in Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

 to his founding of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, but in that it continues a historical ethos. This move, by connecting the Roman empire both culturally and pseudo-historically to the Homeric myth, is commonly viewed as a move by Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 to legitimize the Roman empire. For instance, the epic opens with a summary of the progress of Aeneas and his progeny (in John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

's translation):

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,

And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,

Expel'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.

Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,

And in the doubtful war, before he won

The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;

His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,

And settled sure succession in his line,

From whence the race of Alban fathers come,

And the long glories of majestic Rome.

W. A. Camps

W. A. Camps

William Anthony Camps was a British classical scholar, and also served as Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge from 1970 to 1981. He was known as Tony Camps....

 expresses this common analysis of Virgil when he writes, "There is more than one reminder in the poem that its hero Aeneas is ancestor of Octavian through the supposed descent of the Julii [i.e., Octavian's family] through Aeneas' son Julius."

Like their medieval predecessors, Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 authors drew inspiration from earlier writers. More significantly, the spread of printing, slow increase in literacy, and the development of capitalism conspired to shape a modern concept of text and authorship. In this context, one sees "continuators" in the modern sense: authors either inspired or hired to complete or continue a predecessor's concept. This habit was most noticeable in the most commercialized spheres of literature. Elizabethan drama, for example, is full of examples. As an instance of completion, Francis Waldron completed The Sad Shepherd, a late unfinished play by Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

. As an instance of sequel-writing, John Fletcher

John Fletcher (playwright)

John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...

's The Tamer Tamed continues and lampoons Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

. Controversial literature was amenable to such continuations, as evidenced most especially by the Martin Marprelate

Martin Marprelate

Martin Marprelate was the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts which circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589...

 affair; Philip Sidney

Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

's Arcadia

Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

was continued by Anna Weamys

Anna Weamys

Anna Weamys, sometimes referred to as Anne Weamys was an English author. Little is known of her life, but Weamys has been identified as the author of A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia , which appeared under the name 'Mrs A...

.

Sources

• Boitani, Piero (1989). The European Tragedy of Troilus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Boyle, A.J., ed (1988). The Imperial Muse: Ramus Essays on Roman literature of the Empire to Juvenal through Ovid. Berwick, Australia: Aureal Publications.
• Braunmuller, A.R. (1990) "The Arts of the Dramatist." Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Drama. A.R. Braunmuller and Daniel Hattaway, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 53-92.
• Cairns, Francis (1989). Virgil's Augustan Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Chambers, E.K. (1923). The Elizabethan Stage. 4 vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Clark, Sandra (1994). The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
• Greg, W.W. (1905). Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd, with Francis Waldron's Continuation. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen dramasche. Louvain: A. Uystpruyst.
• Knutson, Roslyn (2001). Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare's Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, Alden (1997). Poetic Allusion and Poetic Embrace in Ovid and Vergil. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.
• Weamys, Anna (1994). A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. *Patrick Cullen Colborn, ed. Women Writers in English, 1350-1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press.