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Just a quick addendum.
I don't know whether Fantasy is judged to be junk, or relegated to children's literature because most of it is bad (& in the judgement of critics all of it is bad) or simply because it contains Elves, Dragons & dark lords. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. Certainly there is a lot of junk churned out in all genres, but there isn't the same conviction that all crime, or all historical, novels are 'trash' just because a good deal of them are. So it does seem to be the subject matter that is the basis for this negative judgement.
Which probably means that even if all fantasy was of the standard of Tolkien it would still be adjudged to be trash – which kind of negates my earlier point. It seems that fantasy is considered trash because its fantasy & is not judged on its 'quality' as fiction, because it is believed to be impossible for fantasy literature to have any quality.
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