In this book, Barbara Wall challenges many typical assumptions about popular literary classics via analysis of sixty Korean variations of The Journey to the West, including novels and poems, but also films, comics, paintings, and dance performances. In contrast to the typical assumption that literary classics like The Journey to the West are stable texts with a single original, she approaches The Journey to the West as a dynamic text comprised of all its variations. From Korean scholars in the 14th century to boy bands like Seventeen in the 21st century, she argues that all the creators of such variations participate in the ongoing story world known as The Journey.

Wall employs literary and quantitative analysis, ample graphic visualizations, and in-depth descriptions of classroom games to find new ways to understand the dynamics of transmedia storytelling and popular engagement with story worlds. Her approach opens new frontiers of intertextual analysis to literary scholars and teachers of literature who seek contemporary methods of introducing the epics of world literature to new generations of students.