Character Function
In medieval chivalric romance, the wizard often appears as a wise old man and acts as a mentor, with Merlin from the King Arthur stories representing a prime example. Other magicians can appear as villains, hostile to the hero.
Both these roles have been used in fantasy. Wizards such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books are featured as mentors, and Merlin remains prominent as both an educative force and mentor in modern works of Arthuriana. Evil sorcerers, acting as villains, were so crucial to pulp fantasy that the genre in which they appeared was dubbed "sword and sorcery".
Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea explored the question of how wizards learned their art, introducing to modern fantasy the role of the wizard as protagonist. This theme has been further developed in modern fantasy, often leading to wizards as heroes on their own quests. A work with a wizard hero may give him a wizard mentor as well, as in Earthsea.
Wizards can act the part of the absent-minded professor, being foolish, prone to misconjuring, and generally less than dangerous; they can also be terrible forces, capable of great magics that work good or evil. Even comic wizards are often capable of great feats, such as those of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride; although a washed-up wizard fired by the villain, he saves the mostly-dead hero.
Read more about this topic: Magician (fantasy)
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