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These are probably evolving terms rather than hard and fast divisions, but what I would say distinguishes fairy tales from fantasy is that a fairy tale is a tale about a human being encountering fa...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
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System
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2020-01-03T20:41:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20781 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:00:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20781 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:00:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
These are probably evolving terms rather than hard and fast divisions, but what I would say distinguishes fairy tales from fantasy is that a fairy tale is a tale about a human being encountering fairy folk, who represent a danger to ordinary human life. Fairies have been Disnified in recent years, but Yeats poem "The Stolen Child" ([http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/816/](http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/816/)) is much closer to the original idea. Fantasy, on the other hand, has become more and more about the wielding of magic or otherwise fantastical powers. Thus we have Harry Potter: not a story about ordinary people encountering dangerous magic, but about an extraordinary boy practicing magic and using it for good. In this sense fantasy is very close to science fiction, which is again about the exploitation of knowledge for power. In this sense we may see the fairy story and fantasy as diametrically opposed takes on the same theme. And in this sense, horror today is perhaps closer to fairy stories than fantasy is.
#1: Imported from external source
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System
·
2016-02-04T01:00:11Z (almost 9 years ago)
Original score: 2