A continuator, in literature, is a writer who creates a new work based on someone else's prior text, such as a novel or novel fragment.
The development of European classical literature out of the common stock of oral tradition proved conducive to reworkings, revisions, and satires.
For instance, the epic opens with a summary of the progress of Aeneas and his progeny (in John Dryden'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.
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.