Literary notes about SuccessoR (AI summary)
The term “successor” in literature serves as a versatile marker of transition and continuity, representing someone who inherits a duty, legacy, or authority from another. It is employed to denote formal shifts in power, as seen in historical narratives where governmental or ecclesiastical offices pass from one individual to another ([1], [2], [3]). In some writings, the word underscores familial or dynastic links, highlighting both lineage and the burden of legacy, as in the portrayal of princes destined to follow in their predecessors’ footsteps ([4], [5]). Authors also use “successor” to convey contrast between different leadership styles or policies, whether through administrative reforms or in allegorical trials where the new leader must contend with inherited challenges ([6], [7]). Even in works that blend the symbolic with the historical, such as mythic epics and novels, the term reinforces the idea that every end gives rise to a new beginning, subtly inviting reflections on the nature of progress, duty, and change ([8], [9]).
- [Lost Illusions.] SEGAUD, solicitor at Angouleme, was successor to Petit-Claud, a magistrate about 1824.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Cerfberr and Christophe - As the successor of Papias and the predecessor of Claudius Apollinaris in the see of Hierapolis, we may perhaps name Abercius or Avircius [172] .
— from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon by J. B. Lightfoot - Justinian had left behind him an ample treasure, the fruit of cruelty and rapine: but this useful fund was soon and idly dissipated by his successor.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Of these I was the eldest, and the destined successor to all his labours and utility.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - He died on the 15th of February, leaving his son Egfrid 563 his successor in the kingdom.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Saint the Venerable Bede - The law of Majorian, which punished obstinate widows, was soon afterwards repealed by his successor Severus, (Novell.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - 489–92, in which he speaks of Stendhal as "a successor and a defender, mutatis mutandis , of the eighteenth-century 'Idéologues.'" 48.
— from On Love by Stendhal - You know the Lion, our King: well, he's at the point of death, and has appointed you his successor to rule over the beasts.
— from Aesop's Fables; a new translation by Aesop - There were four little girls, and two little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby's next successor who was as yet neither.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
