Footnote #5 - High Fantasy and Low Fantasy

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

Footnote #5 seeks to embrace the sub-division of fantasy literature through distinctions of “high” and “low,” whereby the era of post-Tolkien fantasy was culturally and critically understood through the identification of the genre’s specific storytelling modes. Listen as Chris and Alex (well, mostly Alex) give a rundown of the role of alternative worlds and mythic tropes used in such divisions; sword-and-sorcery genre elements, folkloric imagery, and character archetypes; how such categories relate to the evolving language of fantasy scholarship, including the criteria for “immersive” and “intrusive” fantasies; and the political stakes of both identifying and splintering fantasy through the overlapping categories of “high” and “low.”

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Suggested Readings

  • Boyer, Robert H. and Kenneth J. Zahorski. 1982. “The Secondary Worlds of High Fantasy.” In The Aesthetics of Fantasy Literature and Art, ed. Robert C. Schlobin, 56-81. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

  • Clute, John, and John Grant, eds. 1999. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantFANTASY, LOW FANTASY, HIGH FANTASYComment