Comparison between Folk Literature and Modern Fantasy:
Fantasy traces its roots to the folktales, legends, and myths of ancient peoples. However, traditional tales are from the oral tradition of stories passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, while modern fantasies are original stores that come from the imaginations of known authors and its transmission is through the written medium.
Both folktales and fantasies contain fantastical elements. However, folktales are always set in a familiar world; they have stock characters, conventional plots, and traditional motifs, whereas writers of fantasy create a new world with something unusual and its own possibilities. Therefore, a fantasy’s settings, characters, and plots tend to be much more complex than those of the folktales.