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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3886210" data-attributes="member: 2205">Actually, the problem is that he has absolutely done so; he indicated the Wikipedia article and said that although recognizing the weaknesses of wikipedia in general, he more or less agrees with what it says.To say that he hasn't provided his (and as a matter of coincidence, my) definition of what the Fantasy genre is is outright false.  He did so, very specifically.  You just have a follow a link to read it.I'll quote two relevent parts, which seems to be a defining difference of opinion between us:Another of my "amateur passions" is dinosaur paleontology, and I see something very like it there too.  Taxonomy---the art of assigning labels and categories to fossil remains---is largely divided into two types of personalities; "lumpers" and "splitters."  I think perhaps that is where we differ; you are advocating a "lumper" strategy; defining genres in very broad strokes and adding anything that fits those broad interpretations in.  I'm much more of a splitter by nature; I like having much more numerous, but much more narrowly defined and exclusive categories to sort what I see of the world.  Neither is more correct than the other, both have much to recommend them, both are equally valid (I suppose <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) yet the two points of view are not very compatible in certain regards.Thus, to me, the fantasy genre is synomous with the modern fantasy genre, and does not admit just any story that includes fantastic elements.  Modern fantasy certainly takes many cues from such sources and Arthurian story cycles, medieval chansons de geste, mythology and a variety of other sources, but none of those are fantasy per se, because the term fantasy (as a genre tag) is defined by a more explicit and exclusive set of parameters than that.I'll agree with the latter sentence, but certainly not the first.  Just because you didn't follow the link and read the definition submitted doesn't mean that it hasn't been proposed.Primary source referenced: Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature,  ISBN 0-253-35665-2   <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" />   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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