History, myth or folklore? Where does the Wizard come from?

“Tell me a good story”

Wizards are often described as magical creatures that are part of a mythical land. These fantasy stories, containing wizards, witches, magic and a mythical land are inspired by traditional materials such as folklore, myths and legends that have been passed on to generations of people. Well-known writers of such traditional materials (i.e. folklore, myths and legends) are William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Geoffrey Chaucer.

The use of these traditional materials is needed to create these mythical realms and the contents in them. This mythical world has been dubbed by C.W. Sullivan III (2001) in ‘Folklore and Fantastic Literature’ as the ‘Secondary World’ and the use of traditional materials like folklore is needed to make the world and story recognizable once read. To make the fantasy world recognizable for its readers, elements of the real world should be incorporated to have a sense of recognition and to be relatable for the reader as well as folklore which is deemed essential to the creation of the fantasy world.