Low Fantasy Thinks High Fantasy Is Too
Stuck Up
By: Erin
Ferriter
Sure we have all read fantasy. But, what distinguishes low
fantasy from high fantasy. I believe that both low and high fantasy follow the
fairy story concept of J.R.R. Tolkien. However, high fantasy follows it in a
more straightforward manner, whereas low fantasy uses it more as a guideline
than a must. In his essay “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien described the three parts
he believed all fantasy stories contained: recovery, escape, and consolation.
The recovery portion to Tolkien meant the reader recovering the lost wonder and
imagination from their childhood. The consequent escape was breaking free from
the restraints the real world presented. Finally, the consolation occurred and
the reader must return to the real world after their adventure.
In my opinion, high fantasy follows these to a tee. I will
use the example of The
King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany to display this. The recovery occurs
throughout the first chapter. The first instance is on page one as the
parliament of Erl proclaimed they wished to, “be ruled by a magic lord.” You
are immediately told that there is magic in this world, but not what type. So,
your imagination can begin to hypothesize what type of magic you will see:
elves, wizards, trolls, goblins, the possibilities are endless. Next comes the
escape. In chapter two, Alveric journeys to Elfland. It is when he crosses the
border into Elfland that you first escape the real world. Lord Dunsany provides
beautiful imagery of Elfland on pages thirteen and fourteen when he writes,
“The pale-blue mountains stood august in their glory, shimmering and rippling
in a golden light than seemed as though it rhythmically poured from the peaks
and flooded all those slopes with breezes of gold.” You are brought into a
world entirely different from your own that seems so much better, more beautiful,
and more peaceful. The escape continues as you discover more of the magic that
lies in Elfland. The consolation comes in two parts at the end of the novel.
The first is when Alveric, Orion, and Lirazel were finally reunited. They can
be a happy, normal family. This allows you to realize that their adventures are
over and yours must end as well. The second part comes on the last page when Dunsany
writes, “and Erl dreamed too with all the rest of Elfland and so passed out of
all remembrance of man.” For a short time Elfland and the real world
overlapped, but in the end they must be separated.
Low fantasy also follows these three characteristics, but
not as strictly. To demonstrate this I will be using Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I believe the recovery
occurs at the end of the first chapter when Gaiman describes Door’s escape from
Croup and Vandemar. When she encountered a dead end she was able to create a
door that let her out onto a London sidewalk. This is when I stopped and
thought, “So she has some magical abilities, I wonder who else in the book does
too.” For me, the escape occurred when Richard entered London Below. That was
when he abandoned everything that he had in London Above. It was also through
his discovery of London Below, that we, as readers, discovered it as well. Rules
that apply to London Above and to our world no longer apply in London Below.
For example, people can communicate with rats. There is an entire group of
people know as “rat-speakers”. The consolation is the part where I believed it
strayed some from the framework outlined by Tolkien. Although Richard did return to London Above
and regain everything from his old life plus more, he still felt unsatisfied.
After seeing how the rest of his life would go on page 363 he thought, “And it
would not be a bad life. He knew that, too. Sometimes there is nothing you can
do.” After experiencing everything in London Below, an average life was too
boring and predictable for him. So, he returned to live in London Below.
Through the consolation readers are supposed to accept that they must return to
the real world, but this seems to deny that. It appears to me that it is saying
that you do not have to live in the real world if you do not want to.
Though these are just two examples I believe they each
exhibit many of the traits of their respective sub-genre, and therefore can be
used to examine the differences between high and low fantasy.
Erin,I think you might have misunderstood to what Tolkien's "Faerie story" framework refers. You see, recovery, escape, and consolation are the phases of the reading experience *the reader* of fantasy stories undergoes; if you want to talk about the phases of the characters' experiences, that's what Campbell's monomyth and Hero's Journey are about. In trying to break your texts down so that Orion / Alveric / Lirazel or Richard are shown passing through recovery, escape, or consolation, you're confusing their role with YOUR role as reader. By witnessing their experiences and accompanying them through them, we can experience these things ourselves, but ultimately, Tolkien's point was that fantasy is definable as fantasy not for what the story strictly contains (think Campbell here) but for what it does in a reader's brain and heart. There is most certainly a parallelism between the characters' plot arcs and what we feel, but ultimately, fantasy is (in Tolkien's head) a prescription for OUR growth as real people. WHat you're talking about is really the process of the Hero's Journey.
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