High Fantasy

In high fantasy, the secondary world can be entered in different ways

The primary world does not exist

In this type of fantasy the reader is transported directly to a 'secondary' world. For example Middle-Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Ursula le Guin's Earthsea. Maps of the imaginary lands are often included with the books. In Tolkien and Le Guin's worlds the geography is described in precise detail to create authenticity. The Prologue to J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings painstakingly provides a historical and geographical context for the story; the level of detail is indicated in this short extract

There for a thousand years they were little troubled by wars, and they prospered and multiplied after the Dark Plague (S.R.37) until the disaster of the Long Winter and the famine that followed it. Many thousands then perished, but the days of Dearth (1158-60) were at the time of this
tale long past and the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty. The land was rich and kindly, and though it had long been deserted when they entered it, it had been well tilled, and there the king had once had many farms, cornlands, vineyards, and woods (p.17)
J.R.R. Tolkien (1954) The Lord of the Rings

The secondary world is entered through a portal in the primary world

Perhaps the most famous example is the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy enter the magical land of Narnia through the wardrobe in the spare room. This type of fantasy enables the writer to make a direct comparison between the two worlds. Portals that have been used by fantasy writers include; doors, rings, books, mirrors, paintings, and even electricity pylons. What associations do these objects have which make them ideal connectors between worlds?

In some cases the secondary world is less sharply focused than the primary world. This is the case with Alan Garner's Elidor where much of the tension is built on Elidor's intrusion into the realistic post war, Manchester setting.

Portals are also used in computer games such as Myst, Riven and Myst III Exile. Atrus, ( a key figure in all three games) creates his world by writing them in books. The player then enters the different worlds (ages) through the pages of the book.

In Helen Cresswell's time-slip novel, Moondial, the portal, an old sundial in the garden of a stately home, transports Minty into the past where she finds other children who need her help.

'A Sundial!' she exclaimed softly, and then, almost immediately and without knowing why - 'Moondial!' And as she spoke the word a cold distinct wind rushed past her and the whole garden stirred and her eras were filled with a thousand urgent voices. She stood swaying. She put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tight. The whispers faded, the wind died. Minty opened her eyes and was blinded for a moment by the sun. But when she did see, she knew that she was in a now altered morning, not at all the morning she had woken up to.' (p.33)

Helen Cresswell (1988) Moondial London: Puffin

The secondary world is a 'world-within-a-world'
Sometimes physical boundaries might mark off the territory of the secondary world; Events that happen within the boundaries do not happen elsewhere. For example in Alan Garner's The Owl Service, the supernatural events are confined to one Welsh valley

The Secondary world is a dream world

In children's fiction, dreams are sometimes used as a means of exploring alternative realities. Manlove (1999) claims that these books are not true fantasy as the dream is a function of realism in the text. In Philippa Pearce Tom's Midnight Garden Tom's dreams take him back in time where he meets and develops a friendship with a young girl, Hatty. Later he learns that his friend is the younger version of old Mrs Bartholomew who lives in the upstairs flat - they have connected in their dreams. In Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, Marianne is ill and confined to bed. She draws a picture of a house and boy and starts to have strange, lucid dreams in which she is drawn into the world she has created. In the surreal and unsettling dream world Marianne discovers that she has the capacity to cause harm to others.

In Diana Wynne Jones The Lives of Christopher Chant, the eponymous hero is able to enter twelve different worlds by controlling his dreams

He thought everyone had the kind of dreams he had too. He did not think they were worth mentioning. The dream
always began the same way. Christopher got out of bed and walked round the corner of the night-nursery wall - the part with the fireplace, which jutted out - on to a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with
a stream rushing from waterfall to waterfall down the middle, but Christopher never felt there was much point in following the stream down the valley. Instead he went up the path, round a large rock, into the part he always though of as The Place Between. Christopher thought it was probably a left-over piece of world, from before somebody came along and made
the world properly. Formless slopes of towered and slanted in all directions. Some of it was hard and steep, some of it piled -and rubbly, and none of it had much shape. Nor did it have much colour - most of it was the ugly brown you get from mixing every colour in the paintbox. There was always a formless wet mist hanging round this place, adding to the vagueness of everything. You could never see the sky. In fact, Christopher sometimes thought there might not be a sky: he had an idea the formless rock went on and on in a great arch overhead - but when he thought about it, that did not seem possible (pp.8-9)

Diana Wynne Jones (1989)

Although we might call the fantasy worlds 'secondary' 'alternative' or 'imaginary', they are frequently based on recognisable features of the human world and may even be symbolic representations of the 'primary' world. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is for instance a mythic Middle England - a time forgotten by history. The Englishness of Tolkien's vision has been commented on by critics such as his biographer, Humphrey Carpenter.
 
 And in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, Lyra's Oxford is both familiar and strange. The reader might ask whether this is the Oxford in another time? Is it the past? Is it the future? But Pullman explains in his preface 'The first volume is set in a universe like ours, but different in many ways'
 Jordan College was the grandest and richest of all the colleges in Oxford. It was probably the largest, too, though no one knew for certain. The buildings, which were grouped around three irregular quadrangles, dated from every period from the early Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century. It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur. Some part was always about to fall down, and for five generations the same family, the Parslows, had been employed full-time by the College as masons and scaffolders. (p.34)
 
 Philip Pullman (1995) Northern Lights London: Scholastic Publications Ltd
 (See Milicent Lenz for an informative discussion of His Dark Materials in Hunt, P. & Lenz, M. (2001) Alternative Worlds in Fantasy Fiction London: Continuum.

Good and Evil

'Fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.'
Ursula Le Guin (1992) p.64

Many writers have used fantasy as a means of depicting the struggle of good and evil. In C.S. Lewis The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe a Christian allegory of temptation, sacrifice and redemption is presented in the battle between the White Witch and Aslan. And in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the young wizard Harry faces and overcomes the dark Lord Voldermort.
The Dark Mark

And then, without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had
heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded like a spell.
'MORSMODRE!'
And something vast, green and glittering erupted from the patch of darkness Harry's eyes had been struggling to penetrate: it flew up over the treetops and into the sky. 'What the -?' gasped Ron, as he sprang to his feet again staring up at the thing that had appeared. For a split second, Harry thought it was another leprechaun
formation. Then he realised that it was a colossal skull, composed of what looked like emerald stars, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose higher and higher, blazing a haze of greenish smoke, etched
against the black sky like a new constellation. (pp.115-6)

J.K. Rowling (2000) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire London: Bloomsbury

Fantasy Characters

Main characters in High Fantasy often have noble traits, although characters in novels by Tanith Lee and Terry Pratchett provide an interesting contrasts. Frequently an inner nobility shines through a deceptively rough exterior (Aragorn in Lord of the Rings ,for example, or Adaon in Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron).
Adaon, Taran saw, was tall, with straight black hair that fell to his shoulders. Though of noble bearing, he wore the garb of an ordinary warrior, with no ornament save a curiously shaped iron brooch at his collar. His eyes were grey, strangely deep, clear as flame, and Taran sensed that little was hidden from Adaon's thoughtful and searching glance.' (p.14)

Lloyd Alexander (1965) The Black Cauldron

Some stories include imaginary beasts drawn from mythology (e.g. the Basilisk in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Centaurs and Satyrs in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, dragons in the work of Tolkien and Le Guin).

The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came out of its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm. 'You cannot pass,' he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the shadow! You cannot pass.' The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall-to-wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm. (pp 348-9)

J.R.R. Tolkien (1954) The Lord of the Rings

Language

The language of traditional forms of fantasy is often elevated to suit themes and characterisation.
Upon the very Eve of Midsummer, when the sky was blue as sapphire and white stars opened in the East, but the West was still golden and the air was cool and fragrant, the riders came down the Northway to the gates of Minas Tirith. First rode Elrohir and Elladan with a banner of silver, then came Glorfindel and Erestor and all the household of Rivendell, and after them came the Lady Galadriel and Celebron, Lord of Lothlorien, riding upon white steeds and with them many fair folk of their land, grey-cloaked with white gems in their hair, and last came Master Elrond, mighty among Elves and Men, bearing the sceptre of Annuminas, and beside him upon a grey palfrey rode Arwen his daughter, Evenstar of her people.' (pp 1008-9)

J.R.R. Tolkien (1954) Lord of the Rings

Again it is interesting to contrast this style with Terry Pratchett's use of modern idiom. In Discworld he has created an unfamiliar setting but peopled it with recognisable characters (though they may be trolls, dwarves etc.).

Subversion of the Ideology of Traditional Fantasy

Terry Pratchett, among others, has criticised the ideology of traditional fantasy, which he claims promotes values, which are no longer acceptable in contemporary society. (patriarchal, classist and racist). Speaking about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Pratchett has argued that evil characters are always black and reside at the eastern most edges of Tolkien's map. This may largely be true, though Saruman the White doesn't conform to this description. Reflecting on the patriarchal power structures in Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin wrote a later book Tehanu which reworked the ideology of her earlier novels. Today, some fantasy writers are using the genre to convey very different messages to Tolkien, Lewis and Garner. In Queen of the Wolves, Tanith Lee has produced an interesting twist on the High Fantasy genre. Claidi, the slave born heroine is apparently bred to take over as the new ruling female. On the surface, the conventional ideology favouring male domination, is simply transposed into one which favours female domination. But ultimately Claidi, in a typically wry self-observation, questions the existence of the plan, and in so doing undermines the ideological pattern that has been established in fantasy writing.
What do you say - was Twilight right? Am I this dire thing 'Queen of the Wolves'? No, you know I'm not. It's what Argul said: Claidi - a Sheep in Wolf's Clothing. That's me. (p.178)

Tanith Lee (2001) Queen of the Wolves London: Hodder

Terry Pratchett's Discworld books undermine the class-based societies of earlier books such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. And Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials provides challenging intellectual perspectives on the nature of good and evil, innocence, sin and wisdom.

Different Types of Fantasy

Within the genre of children's fantasy a range of sub-genre can be identified. Critics and commentators have found different ways to categorise these texts.

For example, Ruth Nadelman Lynn (1983) suggests the following categorisation: