1. Causing wonder or astonishment.
2. Miraculous; supernatural.
3. Of the highest or best kind or quality; first-rate: has a marvelous collection of rare books.

In strict contrast to the Fantastic, the Marvelous allows for the existence or occurrence of supernatural events without the attendant anxiety or fear. The stuff of legend, of folklore, and of the fable or fairy tale, the Marvelous often employs seduction and humor in achieving its effects, traits which are frequently absent from the Fantastic.

Fabcesco Patrizi listed twelve sources in his La deca ammirabile (1587): ignorance, fable, novelty, paradox, augmentation, change from what is usual, the extranatural, the divine, great utility, the very exact, the unexpected, the sudden. See Weinbergy, History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2, pp. 772-74.