- Bangsian fantasy
Bangsian fantasy is the school of fantasy writing that sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife. Frequently used are
Hades (benign; no torture or pleasure),Heaven (a good place, although religious sects differ on what a newly arrived soul gets when he/she dies) andHell (a bad place, but again, exactly what souls face varies from religion to religion).Bangsian fantasy is named for
John Kendrick Bangs , [languageicon|en|EnglishFantasticFiction > Authors B > John Kendrick Bangs cite web
date =
url = http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/john-kendrick-bangs/
title = John Kendrick Bangs
publisher = Fasntasticfiction.co.uk
accessdate = 2006-09-06] whoseAssociated Shades series of novels, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deals with the afterlives of various famous dead people.Predecessors
Bangs was not the first to write afterlife fantasy; he was merely the modern face put on an old idea. One of the world's earliest pieces of literature, the "
Epic of Gilgamesh ", contains a description of Hell and a voyage across the river of Death in search of eternal life.Some
Greek myths deal withHades . The Greco-Roman mythological understanding ofHades is "not" the same as theHell (which is also referred to asHades ) ofChristianity . Hades (known asErebus among the Romans) is a universal collecting-place for all dead souls; the kind of life led by the owner of the soul makes no difference; though it bears noting that Hades was and still is oft envisioned as having a reservoir for damned souls, known as the pit ofTartarus , as well as a paradisiacal haven for the righteous, known as theElysian fields , these locales nonetheless belong to the sameUnderworld . In Christianity, Hell is a place to which those who live sinful and unrepentant lives go when they die. Most forms of Christian belief hold that there is no escape from Hell, whereas characters in Greek or Roman myth sometimes escape from Hades.Greek epics such as the
Odyssey and Roman epics such as theAeneid have the main character meet people they have known or heroes (such as Achilles) in the underworld, one of the "stops" in their travels.The Bible does not describe Hell in great detail, and some interpretations of the Bible claim it doesn't exist at all [languageicon|en|English
Allan Kardec , "Heaven and Hell", 1865.] . However, with the publication in the 14th century of Dante's "Divine Comedy ", particularly the first Book ("Inferno"), Hell gained imagery still used in fiction today. Hell, as Dante described it, was a cone shape drilled into the Earth by the impact ofSatan 's fall from heaven (drawings of Dante's Hell resemble an open-pit mine). The cone was divided into nine concentric rings, with each lower ring offering more-terrible punishments. The worse a person had been in life, the lower on the cone that person would end up in death.Dante took quite a few liberties with the Christian mythology of Hell. He placed persons alive at the time of the book's publication in Hell (thus taking a firm stance on a somewhat controversial issue amongst Christians: whether or not all persons arrive in Hell or Heaven at the same instant, regardless of when said persons departed the mortal world), and he also meshed Greco-Roman myths into Christian Hell. Various Greek and Roman personages also turn up in the mix, such as
Virgil , theLatin poet who serves as Dante's guide. Dante's works use not just the dead but famous fictional personae as well.Characteristics
In addition to being set in Hades, Heaven, or Hell, another characteristic of Bangsian fantasy is that it often has few, if any, fictitious characters in it. The people in it are much more likely to be either historical or mythical in nature.
Works of Bangsian fantasy
* "
A House-Boat on the Styx " (1895), by John Kendrick Bangs
* "Pursuit of the House-Boat " (1897), by John Kendrick Bangs
* "The Enchanted Type-Writer " (1899), by John Kendrick Bangs
* "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven " (1909), a short story byMark Twain
* "" (1901), by John Kendrick Bangs
* "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946), by Michael Powell &Emeric Pressburger
* "Les jeux sont faits " ("The Chips Are Down") (1952), by Jean-Paul Sartre: Two persons destined for each other are sent back to life, from a bureaucratic afterlife, to consummate their love.
* The "Riverworld "science fiction series (started in 1971), byPhilip José Farmer .
* TheEarthsea fantasy series byUrsula Leguin , in particular "The Farthest Shore " (1972).
* "Inferno" (1976), byLarry Niven andJerry Pournelle
* "What Dreams May Come " (1978), byRichard Matheson
* "On a Pale Horse" (1983), byPiers Anthony : A man about to commit suicide instead shoots the Incarnation of Death and must assume the office, reaping the souls of others.
* "" (1984) byRobert A. Heinlein .
* "Beetlejuice " (1988) directed byTim Burton
* "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French " (1998) byStephen King .
* "The Lovely Bones " (2002), byAlice Sebold References
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