Is Harry Potter Fantasy?

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Harry Potter is widely considered as one of the greatest series of books ever written, 500 million copies have been sold worldwide, resulting in everyone all over the world knowing the name Harry Potter, but is it considered fantasy?

In this article we’ll be breaking down what the fantasy genre entails, and whether or not Harry Potter can be considered fantasy.

So without further ado let’s get started.

What Is Fantasy?

Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world.

Although there’s some exceptions that  writers take, by juxtaposing a real-world setting with fantastical elements, many create entirely imaginary universes with their own physical laws and logic and populations of imaginary races and creatures.

Speculative in nature, fantasy is not tied to reality or scientific fact, and this certainly applies to Harry Potter. 

Harry Potter is one of the greatest examples of fantasy, set in a world where magic is commonplace, but hidden from the non magical portion of the world, there’s goblins, giants, dementors and literally hundreds of other races and species of fantastical creatures that live in the world of Harry Potter, and don’t forget the magic either!

Witches and wizards conjure up water from nowhere, levitate objects and people, and can even go invisible.

So yes, it’s quite easy to see that Harry Potter is fantasy. But is it high fantasy or low fantasy?

High VS Low Fantasy

As we briefly touched on up above, there are two main subgenres of the fantasy genre.

These are broken up into high and low fantasy, and whichever a novel is written in, will massively change everything about the story.

Let’s take a quick look at the definitions of high and low fantasy:

High Fantasy

Set in a magical environment that has its own rules and physical laws, this subgenre’s plots and themes have a grand scale and typically center on a single, well-developed hero or a band of heroes, such as Frodo Baggins and his cohorts in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954).

There’s also generally much more convoluted themes that are discussed in high fantasy.

With a richer and deeper world that we won’t understand from the start of reading the story, we’re forced to think in ways that are outside of what is possible when reading a story that’s high fiction.

Low Fantasy

Set in the real world, low fantasy includes unexpected magical elements that shock characters, like the plastic figurines that come to life in Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980) Low fantasy is much looser of a term, and can involve any magical elements, so long as they’re set in the real world. 

Overall, the primary difference between high fantasy and low fantasy is the setting. In high fantasy, the story takes place in a secondary fictional setting that is utterly independent of the real world.

In low fantasy, the story takes place in a familiar, real world setting. The setting is always going to be the most prominent distinction between high fantasy and low fantasy.

Occasionally though, even with this particular distinction, differentiating between high fantasy and low fantasy is an easy thing to do, and won’t always be so cut and dry.

Harry Potter, High Or Low Fantasy?

So now that we know that Harry Potter is fantasy, which type of fantasy would it be placed into?

This is actually a topic that’s often left open for debate, as fans and readers have a variety of opinions on what subgenre of fantasy Harry Potter belongs to.

Overall though the majority of readers accept that Harry Potter takes place in a low fantasy world. 

This is because Harry Potter is set in the real world, but a parallel wizarding world also exists alongside it.

This can result in a relatively confusing problem when defining what genre Harry Potter is exactly, but as a general rule of thumb, when Harry Potter is taking place in our world, it’s certainly low fantasy, but when they cross over to the wizarding world it can also be considered high fantasy.

Another example of a piece of literature being between these two subgenres is Alice in Wonderland.

At the beginning of the story, we can see that Alice is in the real world, low fantasy, until she falls into wonderland, where the story becomes high fantasy. 

Regardless, Harry Potter being relatively difficult to define doesn’t stop us from enjoying the story anymore than we already do, every reader will have their own opinions on what subgenre of fantasy Harry Potter falls under, but it’ll always belong to fantasy. That’s for sure. 

Final Thoughts

Harry Potter is without a doubt one of the best selling series of novels of all time.

Spanning over 7 different novels, the specific subgenre that it’s set in is really up for debate, whether it be high fantasy or low.

Regardless, it’s a fantastic series of books that allow the imagination to run absolutely wild (seriously, when did you last read Harry Potter and not try to perform a spell whilst you’re on your own?!)

Settling what genre Harry Potter belongs to is ultimately one that doesn’t change anyone’s love for the book, so whether you regard it as high fantasy or low, the wizarding world remains a fantastical and wondrous place for us all to escape to from time to time.

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