Much of my mail is still going to California and gets here as an when Kevin has time to forward it. As a result I have only just got the October 2010 issue of the New York Review of Science Fiction. In it there is an article by Clay Wyatt that looks at Milton’s Paradise Lost as Bible fanfic. In his introduction Wyatt explains as follows:
To quote James Hanford’s book, A Milton Handbook, as early as 1628 Milton wanted to “employ the English language in some lofty subject comparable to the Iliad or Odyssey“. In doing so, he created new scenes (the War in Heaven), expanded the background of a previously minor character (the serpent or Satan), refocused the story on the only available character in Biblical creation literature that met the requirements of an epic hero (Adam), and introduced a moral realignment by inserting his Protestant belief that everyone chooses their own fate (“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”).
Obviously there’s a lot more to the argument than that, and NYRSF is not available online so I can’t point to the original, so please don’t start nit-picking Wyatt’s ideas based solely on the brief quote above. What’s important here is that the idea of wanting to take an existing story an create your own tale in the same setting is by no means solely a modern phenomenon. Nor is it limited to fans. It is something that writers do (sometimes better than others).
Not at all modern, though this may be one of the earliest cases in English literature. My understanding is that much of Ancient Greek mythology involved making up new stories about the demi-god heroes such as Heracles coming to one’s own city.
And indeed, there’s an interesting trail here. The original Iliad of Homer contains a minor character Aeneas. The Roman poet Virgil then composed a successor work that concentrates on Aeneas. Then Dante Alighieri composes his Divine Comedy, focusing on the Hell/Purgatory/Paradise triad, with Virgil as a (possibly the) central character.
And people have been doing follow-ons ever since.
One thing you left out is that Geoffrey of Monmouth has Britain being founded by the great-grandson of Aeneas, which gives us a direct link through to Shakespeare (King Lear) and to the Arthurian cycle.