High and Low Fantasy

[steepholm]

I put this query out on Facebook but may as well repeat it here, since the answer hasn't come zinging back in unambiguous terms as yet...

Who coined the terms "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" - both the concepts and the actual phrases? I feel this is something I ought to know just like that, since they have historically had quite wide currency, even though (for several reasons) I dislike and avoid them myself.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I would've thought you would know offhand, too! It seems that Lin Carter or Edward James may've had something to do with it; anent Carter, does "high fantasy" appear before 1960s/'70s reception of Tolkien?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dislike them so much I stopped reading anything that mentioned them. So I don't know.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

My guess, after a short check via the google N-gram thing, is that the use of the two terms as opposed to each other started around 1978, in Dark Imaginings (http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=0zNaAAAAYAAJ&q=%22low+fantasy%22&dq=%22low+fantasy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XttTU9KCIcb1kQXJq4GQAQ&redir_esc=y), a work of literary criticism by Robert H. Boyer, Kenneth J. Zahorski (which I haven't read).
The term "high fantasy" seems to have been around since the mid-nineteenth century, though.

Editing to add: The term "low fantasy" was around earlier in the 1970s, but it looks like it was then being used by psychologists to describe children who didn't fantasise much, as e.g. "Seven- to nine-year-old boys were initially administered part of the Michigan Picture Test and then categorized as High and Low Fantasy on the basis of their scores..."

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that "high fantasy" was the original and was used to distinguish Tolkienesque fantasy from whimsy or fairy tales. "Low fantasy" was a much later coinage. Is there anything in Rhetorics of Fantasy about the origins of the terms? I know that Farah defines her own categories, but was there anything in there about "high/low fantasy"?

Unfortunately, I honestly can't remember and also can't remember where my copy is. My books are very disorganised at the moment. :(

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

In the nineteenth century, the expression "high fantasy" occurs quite a lot with the apparent meaning of "vivid fantasy" or "extreme fantasy." I wouldn't count that kind of usage as a genre term at all -- more praise of the author's imagination.

I rather thought Lin Carter or L. Sprague de Camp came up with "high fantasy" as a genre term, but I may well be thinking of "heroic fantasy."

[readthisandweep.livejournal.com]

I can't answer your question, because I don't know. Your post did get me thinking. About the difference between fantasy (whatever height) & magical realism.

I'm rereading Gabriel García Márquez, & that got me thinking too...