What is the biggest collection of intertextual (related fiction al texts)?

Question

I was wondering what is the largest collection of intertextual or related fictional texts e.g. same universe same characters recurring. I'm not counting fan fiction here just TV shows and official books films etc that have been produced and sold. I've thought of three contenders for the largest number of interrelated texts, Star Trek, Doctor Who and the Marvel comics universe (counting all those comics that share characters between them as one big related universe. ) Are any of these the biggest set of fictional texts or is there some other fictional entity that might beat even these fictional giants?Anyone got any stats. Someone must know this.

Answer 1

What a good question! And what a surprise that you haven't got many good answers.

For there are all sorts of "fictional" texts out there: "knock-knock" jokes, graffiti featuring Kilroy, scripts for Days of Our Lives, Dagwood and Blondie comic strips (and all the take-offs), Mickey Mouse cartoons/stories/skits at Disney World, Cinderellas (in virtually every language and virtually every medium), retellings of the story of Odysseus/Ulysses . . . .

The last one (Ulysses) is an example of what I call "classics and their cousins." Of course, there are first cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed . . . . the list goes on. By that I mean translations, retellings, adaptations, parallel stories, parodies, and the like.

Of course, I can't provide statistics, but I would put my money on retellings of Bible stories. Forget about translations (maybe some folks wouldn't want to call those "fictional"). But just think of all these examples: children's Bible story books, picture books, novels (like Thomas Mann's tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers), movies (The Ten Commandments), plays (the Second Shepherd's play), modern versions (J. B., Archibald MacLeish's play about Job), musicals (Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat), New Yorker cartoons, parodies (Mark Twain's Diary of Adam and Eve), dramatizations of retellings (Jerry Bock's and Sheldon Harnick's The Apple Tree, based on Mark Twain's Diary...), epic poems (Paradise Lost), lyric poems (whole anthologies of these), and the like. Then, of course, there are paintings, stained glass windows, tapestries, sculpture, mixed media, and the Noah's Ark restaurant on the banks of the Missouri River in St. Charles, Missouri.

It's simply a basic of human nature. Somebody comes up with a good story, and we never let it go. We keep retelling it, recasting it, reconstructing it as many ways as we possibly can. One challenge for writers is to tell a story that has never been told; an equally appealing one is to retell an old story one more time. Whoever told those old Bible stories, whoever preserved and collected them, just threw a pebble in a pond, or a handful of pebbles, and the waves keep rippling and rippling and rippling. I'd be willing to bet that somewhere right now somebody is recapturing the story of Joseph and his brothers from Leah's point of view or imagining the interaction among all of King David's wives or planning a television mini-series based on the life of Mary of Magdala. So be it.

Answer 2

Thanks for your help!