Literary notes about pander (AI summary)
In literature, "pander" is frequently used both as a noun and a verb to denote the act of catering to base desires or to describe characters who indulge in or facilitate vice. Often, it conveys a moral judgment, as when a character is labeled the facilitator of another's vices [1] or critiqued for yielding to public or personal corruption [2, 3]. The term finds versatile application—from Shakespearean narratives where figures are likened to a facilitator of licentiousness [4, 5, 6] to more abstract political or social commentaries that criticize appeasement of popular sentiment or unethical inclinations [7, 8]. This dual usage underscores "pander" as a powerful literary device for exposing and condemning the compromises made in the pursuit of pleasure or power [9, 10, 11].
- La Fleur, whom they had scarcely noticed, was the pander of the Marquis’s vices.
— from Orphans of the Storm by Henry MacMahon - It is an intolerable matter, beyond all possible sufferance, when religion is made to pander to sensuality and extortion.
— from A Supplication for the Beggars by Simon Fish - What! … must divine Religion be dragged down from its pure throne to pander to the selfish passions of the multitude?
— from Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self by Marie Corelli - Camillo was his help in this, his pander.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one Master Brook, that you have cozen'd of money, to whom you should have been a pander.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Not- to dispraise me, and call me pander, and bread-chipper, and I know not what!
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - But art should not seek to pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths.
— from Zanoni by Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron - So it is always with real leaders, who seek to guide rather than pander to public opinion.
— from Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft Recollections of Oscar S. Straus ... by Oscar S. (Oscar Solomon) Straus - With flattering words and gentle tone, To woo and win some guileless maid, Cunning pander need you none,— Friar Lubin knows the trade.
— from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - This, at any rate, was von Baer's opinion, who assigns to Pander the glory of the discovery of the germ-layers.
— from Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology by E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell - Dalton, likewise, in Pander and Dalton's work on Fossil Sloths, expressed, in 1821, a similar belief.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
