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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 964226" data-attributes="member: 6533">I've never heard the term low fantasy used before this board.  I would say that I have never heard the term low fantasy used in literary circles, too, but that would be admitting that I've been in literary circles that discussed fantasy, and that would mean instant grad student death.As one of my favorite profs may or may not have said to me, "...better to be found discussing pornography."But suffice it to say, I do not think that there is really grounds for a term like low fantasy.  In my experience that term comes from the natural desire to create a low in comparison to high fantasy, but high fantay is a term that was never developed with an idea towards a comparitive system of genres.  High was just the adjective chosen to distinguish it from every other type of fantasy.I think that's why there is so much confusion as to what exactly you would identify as low fantasy: low magic, sword and sorcery, fairy tales, etc.If you were really to set up as a category the proper genre would be something like Lewis Carrol and Jonathon Swift style satirical fantasy, since that would have been the literary genre high fantasy would have been most eager to distinguish itself from.</blockquote>