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In his introduction to the anthology Fantastic Tales (Random House, 1997), Italo Calvino cites Tzvetan Todorov to explain the difference between the Fantastic and the Marvelous. Todorov “holds that what distinguishes ‘fantastic’ narrative is precisely our perplexity in the face of an incredible fact, our indecision in choosing between a rational, realistic explanation and an acceptance of the supernatural…the incredible event the fantastic story tells must always allow for a rational explanation, unless it happens to be a hallucination or a dream (a fail-safe device that sanctions just about anything).

“On the other hand, the ‘marvelous,’ according to Todorov, is different from the fantastic in that it presupposes our acceptance of the implausible and the inexplicable, as in fables or the Thousand and One Nights.”

Here’s a classic of the fantastic, the marvelous, the weird: The Manuscript Found In Saragossa by Jan Potocki.