Literature
Hard Low Fantasy
Hard low fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literature characterized by its realistic and gritty portrayal of the fantastical elements within a low-magic or non-magical world. It often features minimal supernatural elements and a focus on the harsh realities of the setting. This subgenre emphasizes a more grounded and historically accurate depiction of the world, often with a darker and more brutal tone.
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eBook - PDFThe Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Question of Style
- Susan Mandala(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
As with science fiction, so with fantasy (Attebery 1992: 105; Wolfe 1986), whose corresponding struggle against nearly complete exile from academe is well documented (e.g. see Parker 1956: 60; Schlobin, ed. 1982: ix; Swinfen 1984: 11). Proponents of the literary fantastic, eager to show that their genre of choice was of true value because it interrogated notions of the ‘real’ and led readers to experience challenging states of doubt (argued most explicitly by Jackson 1981, but see also Brooke-Rose 1981; Horskotte 2004; Todorov 1973), were especially hard on fantasy, deriding it as ‘just’ a fairy tale, an ultimately conservative form with a ‘relatively rigid narrative structure’ (Armitt 2005: 7) that ‘manipulated the reader’ (Horskotte 2004: 34) into a ‘pass-ive’ (Jackson 1981: 131) acceptance of ‘current ideologies’ (Horskotte 2004: 37) as determined by the hegemonic order (Horskotte 2004; Jackson 1981). Both Le Guin (1974/1993: 34) and Swinfen (1984: 1) found the academic response to fantasy so extreme in its negativity as to border on the irrational. Swinfen (1984) put it this way: [S]ome critics and academics condemn the whole genre with a passion which seems to have its roots in emotion rather than objective critical standards; (Swinfen 1984: 1) and Le Guin (1974/1993) spoke of a moral disapproval of fantasy, a disapproval so intense, and often so aggressive, that I cannot help but see it as arising, fundamentally, from fear. (Le Guin 1974/1993: 34) When the ‘respectable’ literary world did take an interest in science fiction or fantasy, it insisted, as Parker (1956: 601) noted, 4 Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy on reclassifying it. Tallis (1984), for example, accepted Nineteen Eighty-Four and Gulliver’s Travels as great works of literature by arguing that they were more mimetic than fantastic in their ‘scrupulously realistic realization’ (Tallis 1984: 193).
eBook - PDF- Jean-François Leroux, Camille La Bossière(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- University of Ottawa Press(Publisher)
The sentimental nursery fantasy written for two levels of 192 adult and child reader continued in A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), with their linguistic play and warm, witty parables of animated animal toys. Following the Edwardian period, fantasy slowly diverged into two strains of writing for children: low fantasy and high fantasy. Low fantasy is usually set in this world. Characters, incidents, and quite often physical laws of reality may be altered and exaggerated for humorous effect. High or epic fantasy is often for older child readers, teenagers, and adults, and incorporates elements of Tolkien's Secondary Reality, the concept of the created other-world (Tolkien 39-40). High fantasy traditionally presents the ongoing, epic battle of good versus evil within the construct of a mythic, folkloric, or feudal world. Through the twentieth century, low fantasy developed within such subgenres as the tales of personified toys and inanimate objects, as found in Rumer Godden's The Doll's House (1947) and Lynne Reid Banks's The Indian in the Cupboard series (1980). Following in the traditions of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures ofPinocchio (1892) and Hans Christian Andersen, stories in this subgenre focus on the fascination with the miniature and the mystery of life quickening as toys come alive. Also within the Low Fantasy category, there developed a light, comic fantasy of exaggerated character traits, stretched physical laws, and nonsense extending to sharp satire. Examples include Astrid Lindgren's story of a heroically strong, self-possessed, folkloric girl in Pippi Longstocking (1950) and Mary Norton's saga of miniature people who hide among the floorboards in The Bor-rowers (1952). Both take place in this world, the primary real world, only slightly skewed from our perceived reality.
- W. A. Senior(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- The Kent State University Press(Publisher)
To a rapid-paced and technological society, with its fractious divisions and fractured outlook, fantasy’s inclusive interwoven tapestry offers a clear relationship of causes and effects. Daily we read in news magazines and papers, various types of fiction, and nonfiction best-sellers by cultural gurus of the loss of spirituality and direction within our society. Lacking the religious faith of earlier generations and facing constant rapid-fire changes in social and economic life, many people look for some kind of assurance that there is substance and reason behind the sound and fury of contemporary life. Fantasy, with its organic and animistic teleology, endows each being and his decisions with reason and purpose; “instead of imitating the perceived confusion and complexity of existence, [fantasy] tries to hint at an order and clarity underlying existence—in fantasy, we need not compromise. Every word spoken is meaningful, though the meaning may be subtle” (Le Guin, Language 87–88). Even such small actions as a scared hobbit picking up a ring in the dark have clearly traceable consequences and ultimate importance, and the largest of events often turn on small individual acts. In American fantasy as a whole, Brian Attebery contends that “high fantasy establishes a sphere of significance, in which the actions of hero and inhuman, helper and villain, reflect a coherent and extractable order. Characters are not merely individuals but the upholders of moral and intellectual standards” (13)
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