Marvellous
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The term marvelous has two meanings. The first is causing wonder or astonishment and surprise (such as supernatural phenomena), the second denotes something of the highest or best kind or quality.
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Generic theory of marvelous fiction
In literary theory, it is opposed to the fantastique. In the preface to Pierre Mabille's Mirror of the Marvelous, Breton states: "The marvellous has never been better defined than as being in complete contrast to the fantastic." Tsvetan Todorov agrees with this point of view.
Etymology
First attested from 1300, from Old French, from merveillos, from merveille a wonder. See also: marvel, from Vulgar Latin *miribilia, from Latin mirabilia (“wonderful things”), from neuter plural of mirabilis (“strange, wonderful”), from miror (“I wonder at”), from mirus (“wonderful”).
The marvelous is popular
The marvelous is popular is one of the most often quoted excerpts of Ado Kyrou's Le Surréalisme au cinéma.
- "J'abhorre les aristocrates et les aristocraties (de classe ou de n'importe quoi). Qu'ils gardens leurs Bressons et leurs Cocteaux. Le merveilleux cinématographique, le merveilleux moderne est populaire et les meilleurs exemples de films exaltants sont, depuis Méliès et Fantômas, les films des salles de quartiers populaires, les films qui, paraît-il, n'ont pas leur place dans l'histoire du cinéma. --page 100, 2005 edition.
Translated by
- "They can keep their Bressons and their Cocteaus. The cinematic, modern marvelous is popular, and the best and most exciting films are, beginning with Méliès and Fantômas, the films shown in local fleapits, films which seem to have no place in the history of cinema." --Kyrou, Ado. “The Marvelous is Popular.”
This quote was published first in Paul Hammond's The Shadow and its Shadow anthology and later by Joan Hawkins in Cutting Edge.
The marvelous is always beautiful
- "Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful." --Surrealist Manifesto (1924) - André Breton
Related terms
fantastic - greatness - fantastique - supernatural - the uncanny
