The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, "A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world." In truth, fantasy fiction can encompass any amount of imagination in any setting.
Major categories of fantasy are simple: high fantasy and low fantasy.
When faced with the term "fantasy," it's common to think first of high fantasy. Remember those castles and dragons I mentioned? That's high fantasy, a story surrounding its fantastical elements, where the premise of the story exists specifically because of those elements. For example, The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy. Many immersive video games like Skyrim are high fantasy. Most commonly, high fantasy is set in a world that is not our own.
Low fantasy, in contrast, displays fantastical elements mixed in with real life. Magic tossed in to modern-day New York. As much as it hurts to use the example, The Twilight Saga is a perfect representation of low fantasy: a real world setting with everyday actions but a clearly imaginative element mixed in. I don't think there are any sparkling vampires in real life Washington, but Washington sure does exist outside the story.
Those terms are just simple overviews, though. It's far from black and white. The middle ground in fantasy categories is sometimes overwhelming.
For instance, where would you place Harry Potter? Low fantasy, right? Because it happens in London and there are real people and -- WAIT! Hogwarts is kind of its own place. The setting isn't real and the story is specifically about magic. So.... High fantasy? Low fantasy? Highlow fantasy?
It isn't so clear. Generally, authors place their writing into categories like urban fantasy - that magic in New York thing - or epic fantasy. Unfortunately, it doesn't even stop there. The Wikipedia page for fantasy genres lists over fifty examples.
In this blog, most analysis will focus on the mass appeal of high fantasy, but I'll definitely touch on low fantasy as well.
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