Fantastical Adventure?

Our discussion on Thursday about whether or not adventure narratives had to have happened (must be based upon true events) got me thinking. I asked Janelle about this after class, but I wanted to put it up here to see what you guys thought.

In this class, we have read a lot of books retelling real events. And even those that were titled as fiction were based in reality- the Eiger Sanction was set on the Eiger and The Voyage of the Narwhal was set in the Arctic. Given our discussion in class, I wonder this: would you define any fantasy or sci-fi novels as adventure narratives then?

Personally, I think that Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are definitely adventure narratives. Given our question in class of "what makes an adventure narrative?" I tried to piece together why I would define Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit as such. What I came to was that I would define those books as adventure narratives for two main reasons. First, because they involve the protagonist(s) leaving home/going outside of their comfort zones (if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, here's a clip of Bilbo refusing to go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4oBnlx_Ho -- Spolier alert: he ends up deciding to go in the next scene). Secondly, because it is all about people enduring. Of course, during this exploration of horizontal adventures (especially given the title of this week's book), we've talked about how horizontal adventures are all about man enduring despite awful hardships. Lord of the Rings is all about man (and hobbit and dwarf and elf and wizard) enduring as they make their own horizontal adventure across Middle Earth to Mount Doom.

So what do you guys think: can fantasy novels still be adventure narratives? Why or why not?

And just for fun: