Literary notes about Sycophant (AI summary)
Authors often employ "sycophant" to denote a person whose ingratiating flattery toward power is both disingenuous and opportunistic. In literature it becomes a symbol of moral and social degradation, as figures who lack integrity in their pursuit of favor. Some texts use it with biting irony to contrast a character’s obvious servility against the virtues of independence, as seen when the mocking tone in one portrayal accentuates his pandering nature ([1]) or when the fawning servant is scornfully dismissed by a dignified superior ([2]). Other works extend the term to broader social and political commentary, critiquing systems where self-interest and insincerity thrive, whether by contrasting the sycophant with the genuinely virtuous ([3]) or by underscoring the character’s role in the degrading dynamics of patronage ([4]). Thus, "sycophant" in literature encapsulates not only individual moral weakness but also wider societal and political critiques.
- The debonair gallant Who sang her, now the mocking sycophant.
— from Provocations by Sibyl Bristowe - The fawning sycophant and the brawling demagogue, he spurned with contempt.
— from A Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington and Patrick Henry With an appendix, containing the Constitution of the United States, and other documents by L. Carroll (Levi Carroll) Judson - And when the question was put to him, what beast inflicts the worst bite, he said, “Of wild beasts the sycophant, and of tame animals the flatterer.”
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - General Pervoyedov at last himself checked with dignity the disgusting officiousness of his sycophant in the grave.
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
