Enchanted forest
Encyclopedia
Magic (fantasy)
Magic in fiction is the endowing of fictional characters or objects with magical powers.Such magic often serves as a plot device, the source of magical artifacts and their quests...
. Such forests are described in the oldest folklore from regions where forests are common, and occur throughout the centuries to modern works of fantasy. They represent places unknown to the characters, and situations of liminality
Liminality
Liminality is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van...
and transformation.
The forest can feature as a place of threatening danger, or one of refuge, or a chance at adventure.
Folktales
The forest as a place of magic and danger is found among folklore wherever the natural state of wild land is forest: a forest is a location beyond which people normally travel, where strange things might occur, and strange people might live, the home of monsterMonster
A monster is any fictional creature, usually found in legends or horror fiction, that is somewhat hideous and may produce physical harm or mental fear by either its appearance or its actions...
s and witches. Peasants who seldom if ever traveled far from their villages could not conclusively say that it was impossible that an ogre
Ogre
An ogre is a large, cruel, monstrous, and hideous humanoid monster, featured in mythology, folklore, and fiction. Ogres are often depicted in fairy tales and folklore as feeding on human beings, and have appeared in many classic works of literature...
could live an hour away. Hence, in fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s, Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel
"Hansel and Gretel" is a well-known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic hag living deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children...
found a cannibalistic witch in the forest; Vasilissa the Beautiful
Vasilissa the Beautiful
Vasilisa the Beautiful , commonly known as Vasilisa's Doll, is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki....
, Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga or Baba Roga is a haggish or witchlike character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle, kidnaps small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs...
herself; Molly Whuppie
Molly Whuppie
Molly Whuppie is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales. A Highland version, Maol a Chliobain, was collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands...
and her sisters, a giant
Giant (mythology)
The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantes of Greek mythology.In various Indo-European mythologies,...
. It was in a forest that the king of The Grateful Prince
The Grateful Prince
The Grateful Prince is an Estonian fairy tale, collected by Dr. Friedrich Kreutzwald in Eestirahwa Ennemuistesed jutud. W. F. Kirby included in The Hero of Esthonia. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book; he listed his source as Ehstnische Märchen, which was the German translation of...
lost his way, and rashly promised his child for aid, where the heroines, and their wicked stepsisters, of The Three Little Men in the Wood
The Three Little Men in the Wood
The Three Little Men in the Wood or The Three Dwarfs is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, number 13. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book, and a version of the tale appears in A Book of Dwarfs by Ruth Manning-Sanders.It is Aarne-Thompson type 403B, the black and the...
and The Enchanted Wreath
The Enchanted Wreath
The Enchanted Wreath is a Scandinavian fairy tale, collected in Benjamin Thorpe in his Yule-Tide Stories: A Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions...
met magical tests, and where Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister is a well-known European fairy tale which was, among others, written down by the Brothers Grimm in their collection of Children's and Household Tales ...
found the streams that their evil stepmother had enchanted. In Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740...
, Beauty's father is lost in the forest when he finds the Beast's castle. The evil cat-spirits of Schippeitaro
Schippeitaro
Shippeitaro is a Japanese fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book, listing his source as Japanische Marchen.-Synopsis:A young warrior wandered the land in search of adventure...
live in the forest.
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Children's and Household Tales is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales .-Composition:...
, the hero always goes into the forest. It is not itself enchanted, but it contains enchantments and, being outside normal human experience, acts as a place of transformation. The German fairy tale has an unusual tendency to take place in the forest; even such neighboring countries as France or Italy are less like to have fairy tales situated in the forest.
Even in folklore, forests can also be places of magical refuge. Snow White
Snow White
"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
found refuge with dwarfs from her stepmother, The Girl Without Hands
The Girl Without Hands
The Girl Without Hands or The Handless Maiden or The Girl With Silver Hands or The Armless Maiden is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 31. It is Aarne-Thompson type 706.-Synopsis:...
found a hut to stay in when she had been slandered to her husband, and Genevieve of Brabant
Genevieve of Brabant
Genevieve of Brabant is a heroine of medieval legend.-Legend:Her story is a typical example of the widespread tale of the chaste wife falsely accused and repudiated, generally on the word of a rejected suitor. Genovefa of Brabant was said to be the wife of the palatine Siegfried of Treves, and was...
found not only a refuge from slander but a doe magically came to her aid. Even Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister
Brother and Sister is a well-known European fairy tale which was, among others, written down by the Brothers Grimm in their collection of Children's and Household Tales ...
hid in the forest after their stepmother turned the brother into a deer.
At other times, the marvels they meet are beneficial. In the forest, the hero of a fairy tale can meet and have mercy on talking animals that aid him. The king in many variants of the ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men or The Lady turned Serving-Man is Child ballad number 106Francis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and a murder ballad...
finds an enchanted hind that leads him astray uncanny, but it brings him to a talking bird that reveals to him a murder and that a servant of his is actually a woman, whom the king then marries. It is in the forest that the dwarf of Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin is the eponymous character and protagonist of a fairy tale which originated in Germany . The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm, who first published it in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales...
and the fairy of Whuppity Stoorie
Whuppity Stoorie
Whuppity Stoorie is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Robert Chambers in Popular Rhymes of Scotland. It is Aarne-Thompson type 500, The Name of the Helper...
reveal their true name
True name
A true name is a name of a thing or being that expresses, or is somehow identical with, its true nature. The notion that language, or some specific sacred language, refers to things by their true names has been central to philosophical and grammatical study as well as various traditions of magic,...
s and therefore the heroines of those tales have a way to free themselves. In Schippeitaro
Schippeitaro
Shippeitaro is a Japanese fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book, listing his source as Japanische Marchen.-Synopsis:A young warrior wandered the land in search of adventure...
, the cats reveal their fear of the dog Schippeitaro when the hero of the tale sleeps the night in the forest.
The creatures of the forest need not be magical to have much the same effect; Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, living in the greenwood, has affinities to the enchanted forest. Even in fairy tales, robbers may serve the roles of magical beings; in an Italian variant of Snow White, Bella Venezia
Bella Venezia
Bella Venezia is an Italian fairy tale collected by Italo Calvino in his Italian Folktales. Calvino selected this variant, where the heroine meets robbers, rather than others that contain dwarfs, because he believed the dwarfs were probably an importation from Germany.It is Aarne-Thompson type...
, the heroine takes refuge not with dwarfs but with robbers.
Mythology
The danger of the folkloric forest is an opportunity for the heroes of legend. Among the oldest of all recorded tales, the Sumerian Epic of GilgameshEpic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...
recounts how the heroes Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq , placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of...
and Enkidu
Enkidu
Enkidu is a central figure in the Ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Enkidu was first created by Anu, the sky god, to rid Gilgamesh of his arrogance. In the story he is a wild-man raised by animals and ignorant of human society until he is bedded by Shamhat...
traveled to the Cedar Forest
Cedar Forest
The Cedar Forest is the glorious realm of the gods of Mesopotamian mythology. It is guarded by the demigod Humbaba and was once entered by the hero Gilgamesh who dared cut down trees from its virgin stands during his quest for immortality...
to fight the monsters there and be the first to cut down its trees.
In Norse myth and legend, Myrkviðr
Myrkviðr
In Germanic mythology, Myrkviðr or, in anglicized form, Mirkwood, is the name of several forests....
(or Mirkwood) was dark and dangerous forest that separated various lands; heroes and even gods had to traverse it with difficulty.
Romans referred to the Hercynian Forest
Hercynian Forest
The Hercynian Forest was an ancient and dense forest that stretched eastward from the Rhine River across southern Germany and formed the northern boundary of that part of Europe known to writers of antiquity. The ancient sources are equivocal about how far east it extended...
, in Germania, as an enchanted place; though most references in their works are to geography, Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
mentioned unicorn
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...
s said to live there, and Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, birds with feathers that glowed.
Medieval romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
; the knight-errant
Knight-errant
A knight-errant is a figure of medieval chivalric romance literature. "Errant," meaning wandering or roving, indicates how the knight-errant would typically wander the land in search of adventures to prove himself as a knight, such as in a pas d'armes.The first known appearance of the term...
would wander in a trackless forest in search of adventure. As in the fairy tales, he could easily find marvels that would be disbelieved closer to home. John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
wrote in Paradise Regained (Bk ii. 359) of
Fairy damsels met in forest wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
and such ladies could be not only magical aid to the knight, but ladies for courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
.
Huon of Bordeaux
Huon of Bordeaux
Huon of Bordeaux is the title character of a 13th century French epic with romance elements. He is a knight who, after unwittingly killing Charlot, the son of Emperor Charlemagne, is given a reprieve from death on condition that he fulfill a number of seemingly impossible tasks: he must travel to...
met Oberon the king of elves in the forest. Guillaume de Palerme
Guillaume de Palerme
Guillaume de Palerme is a French romance poem, which has been translated into English.The French verse romance was composed circa 1200, commissioned by Countess Yolande...
hid there with the princess he loved, and found a werewolf
Werewolf
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
who would aid him. In Valentine and Orson
Valentine and Orson
Valentine and Orson is a romance which has been attached to the Carolingian cycle.-Synopsis:It is the story of twin brothers, abandoned in the woods in infancy. Valentine is brought up as a knight at the court of Pippin, while Orson grows up in a bear's den to be a wild man of the woods, until he...
, the Queen is sent into exile and so forced to give birth in the woods; one child, taken by a bear, turns to a wild man of the woods, who later aids Valentine, his long-lost brother. In the "Dolopathos" variant of the Swan Children, a lord finds a mysterious woman – clearly a swan maiden or fairy
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
– in an enchanted forest and marries her. Genevieve of Brabant
Genevieve of Brabant
Genevieve of Brabant is a heroine of medieval legend.-Legend:Her story is a typical example of the widespread tale of the chaste wife falsely accused and repudiated, generally on the word of a rejected suitor. Genovefa of Brabant was said to be the wife of the palatine Siegfried of Treves, and was...
, having rebuffed a would-be lover and found herself accused of adultery by him, escaped to the forest.
This forest could easily bewilder the knights. Despite many references to its pathlessness, the forest repeatedly confronts knights with forks and crossroads, of a labyrinthine complexity. The significiance of their encounters is often explained to the knights -- particularly those searching for the Holy Grail
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...
-- by hermit
Hermit
A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...
s acting as wise old men -- or women
Wise old man
The wise old man is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character...
. Still, despite their perils and chances of error, such forests are places where the knights may become worthy and find the object of their quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
; one romance has a maiden urging Sir Lancelot on his quest for the Holy Grail, "which quickens with life and greenness like the forest."
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
used this image in the opening of The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, where he depicted his state as allegorically
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
being lost in a dark wood.
Into the Renaissance, both Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso
Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...
and The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
had knight-errants who traveled in the woods.
While these works were being written, expanding geographical knowledge, and the decrease of woodland for farmland, meant the decrease of forests that could be presumed magical. In A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
wrote of a forest that was enchanted specificially by the presence of Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen; like many forests in Shakespeare's works, it becomes a place of metamorphisis and resolution. Others of his plays, such as As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
, take place in a forest, which contains no enchantments but acts much as the forest of folklore.
Modern fantasy
The use of enchanted forests shaded into modern fantasy with no distinct breaking point, stemming from the very earliest fantasies. In George MacDonaldGeorge MacDonald
George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. It was C.S...
's Phantastes
Phantastes
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women is a fantasy novel written by George MacDonald, first published in London in 1858. It was later reprinted in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fourteenth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in April 1970.The story centres on the character...
, the hero finds himself in a wood as dark and tangled as Dante's, una selva obscura that blots out sunlight and is utterly still, without any beasts or birdsong. The more inviting but no less enchanted forest in The Golden Key
The Golden Key
The Golden Key is a fairy tale written by George MacDonald. It was published in Dealings with the Fairies .It is particularly noted for the intensity of the suggestive imagery, which implies a spiritual meaning to the story without providing a transparent allegory for the events in it.-Plot...
borders Fairy
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
land and draws the hero to find the title key at the end of the rainbow. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of...
, L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
depicted the wild and dangerous parts of Oz as being forested, and indeed, inhabited with animated trees with human-like traits, a common feature in children's literature.
J.R.R. Tolkien made use of forests as representing enchantment and the ancientness of the world: Mirkwood
Mirkwood
Mirkwood is a name used for two distinct fictional forests in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. In the First Age, the highlands of Dorthonion north of Beleriand were known as Mirkwood after falling under Morgoth's control. During the Third Age, the large forest in Rhovanion, east of the Anduin in ...
, Fangorn forest
Fangorn forest
Fangorn in J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, was a forest located in the fictional world of Middle-earth and was the home of the tree shepherds, the Ents. It was named after the oldest Ent, Treebeard or Treebeard after it. Tolkien did, however, state that there was confusion about the two...
, and the Old Forest
Old Forest
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest is a small forested area which lies east of the Shire in Buckland....
. He also made use of folklore about trees, such as the willow, believed to uproot themselves and stalk travelers, in Old Man Willow
Old Man Willow
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Old Man Willow is a fictional character, appearing in The Lord of the Rings. He was a willow tree in the Old Forest from which much of the Forest's hatred of walking things came. He is portrayed in the story as a tree, though a sentient and evil one with various...
. His elves
Elf (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Elves are one of the races that inhabit a fictional Earth, often called Middle-earth, and set in the remote past. They appear in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings, but their complex history is described more fully in The Silmarillion...
are strongly associated with forests, especially Mirkwood
Mirkwood
Mirkwood is a name used for two distinct fictional forests in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. In the First Age, the highlands of Dorthonion north of Beleriand were known as Mirkwood after falling under Morgoth's control. During the Third Age, the large forest in Rhovanion, east of the Anduin in ...
and Lothlórien. Still more, Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil
Tom Bombadil is a supporting character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955. In the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins and company meet Bombadil in the Old Forest...
is a genius loci of the Old Forest
Old Forest
In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest is a small forested area which lies east of the Shire in Buckland....
, the wooded land about the Shire
Shire (Middle-earth)
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in...
, and the ent
Ent
Ents are a race of beings in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world Middle-earth who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in folklore around the world. Their name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant....
s acts as the forest come to life.
Following him, the forest is often a magical place in modern fantasy. It continues to be a place unknown to the characters, where strange dangers lurk. It is particularly close to folklore in fairytale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy
Fairytale fantasy is distinguished from other subgenres of fantasy by the works' heavy use of motifs, and often plots, from folklore.-History:...
, featuring in such works as James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
's The White Deer
The White Deer
The White Deer is a 96-page children's novel written by James Thurber in 1945. It is a fairy tale about the quest of the three sons of King Clode who are set perilous tasks to win the heart and hand of a princess without her memories who had once been a beautiful white deer....
and The 13 Clocks
The 13 Clocks
The 13 Clocks is a fantasy tale written by James Thurber in 1950 in Bermuda, while he was completing one of his other novels. It is written in a unique cadenced style, in which a mysterious prince must complete a seemingly impossible task to free a maiden from the clutches of an evil duke...
. It features in other fantasies as well. For instance, in the contemporary fantasy
Contemporary fantasy
Contemporary fantasy, also known as modern fantasy or indigenous fantasy, is a sub-genre of fantasy, set in the present day. It is perhaps most popular for its sub-genre, urban fantasy.-Definition and overview:...
Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
books, the forest near Hogwarts
Hogwarts
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry or simply Hogwarts is the primary setting for the first six books of the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, with each book lasting the equivalent of one school year. It is a fictional boarding school of magic for witches and wizards between the ages of...
is forbidden because of its magical nature. The home of unicorn
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...
s, centaur
Centaur
In Greek mythology, a centaur or hippocentaur is a member of a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse...
s, and giant spiders, it continues the tradition of the forest as a place of wild things and danger. In My Neighbor Totoro
My Neighbor Totoro
, is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan...
, the forest home of the Totoros is an idyllic place where no harm will come to the heroines of the movies. In contrast, in the Touhou Project
Touhou Project
The , also known as Toho Project or Project Shrine Maiden, is a Japanese dōjin game series focused on bullet hell shooters made by the one-man developer Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member, known as ZUN, is responsible for all the graphics, music, and programming for the most part...
series by ZUN
Team Shanghai Alice
is a one-man Japanese dojin game developer specializing in shoot 'em ups. The team's only releases thus far have been the Touhou Project games and related merchandise.-Games:*The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil...
, the Forest of Magic is an extremely dangerous place crawling with Youkai.
The forest is often filled with magical animals, plants, maybe even magical rocks and creeks. Often there will be elves, dwarves, and other mythical creatures that may or may not have been made up by the author on the spot, and trees that talk or with branches that will push people off their horses, and thorny bushes which will open to let people in but close and leave people stuck inside, and other plants that move, or turn into animals at night, or the like. Perhaps there will even be creeks which will turn unwary travelers into frogs if drunk from, and maybe sorcerers
Magician (fantasy)
A magician, mage, sorcerer, sorceress, wizard, enchanter, enchantress, thaumaturge or a person known under one of many other possible terms is someone who uses or practices magic that derives from supernatural or occult sources...
live somewhere in the depths of the forest.