Explanation
The status of a sentence depends partly on its representational context. A house that grows upwards each winter may be accepted without comment in a fairy tale and require demanding evidence in a property report. The words alone do not fix the kind of claim or the appropriate standard of explanation. The profile neither confirms nor refutes supernatural reality by analysing language. It makes assumptions inspectable: which events count as possible, who shares that expectation and how a narrative invites acceptance. An eventual explanation may remove a puzzle without destroying every aesthetic or personal significance of having wondered.
Movement of thought
1. Describe the represented occurrence. 2. Identify its reality frame and expected explanation. 3. Distinguish surprise from supernatural interpretation. 4. Test how another genre or audience changes the claim.
Scientific use case
Narrative analysis can compare how narrators supply explanations, authorise witnesses or normalise extraordinary events. Claims about what real audiences believe require reception evidence beyond the text's invitations.
Example
Invented comparison: “At midnight the painted bird left its frame.” In a fable this can initiate an accepted world. In an eyewitness statement it prompts questions about metaphor, lighting, trickery and evidence. In another story those possibilities remain unresolved. The same clause participates in three different contracts of understanding.
Counterexample
An unusual event is not necessarily a violation of natural law. A character's astonishment does not establish a miracle. Nor should a narrow modern genre category be substituted for the whole historical field of the marvellous.
Distinction
Adynaton uses impossibility for emphasis; fiction concerns factual commitment; wonder is a response. The marvellous can intersect with each without becoming its synonym.
Effect on thought and perception
The additional orientation concerns the limits of a represented reality order. Fictional status, plausibility and impossible exaggeration do not alone answer that question.
Resonance
Resonance may be the temporary loosening of familiar assumptions through wonder. This experience is neither a compulsory belief nor a reason to abandon evidential standards in ordinary factual reporting.
Etymology
German wunderbar belongs to the word family of Wunder. English marvellous has its own literary history; a lexical gloss does not settle either term's theoretical range.
Provenance
The inherited HWdR article spans religious and aesthetic contexts. Todorov's narrower merveilleux is presented as one later framework, not the original or exhaustive meaning of all earlier uses.
Cite this entry
Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „The marvellous“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-ADD-20261020-0098. ATLAS 261, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-ADD-20261020-0098The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-20. Include your access date for precise references.
Guiding question
Which order of reality makes this event ordinary, doubtful or astonishing?
Five coordinate questions
These descriptions explain the entry. They are not controlled register values and do not generate shared register results.
- Where can the process be observed?
Invented comparison: “At midnight the painted bird left its frame.” In a fable this can initiate an accepted world. In an eyewitness statement it prompts questions about metaphor, lighting, trickery and evidence. In another story those possibilities remain unresolved. The same clause participates in three different contracts of understanding.
- What happens to the material?
Describe the represented occurrence.
Identify its reality frame and expected explanation.
Distinguish surprise from supernatural interpretation.
Test how another genre or audience changes the claim.
- At what level does a change occur?
The additional orientation concerns the limits of a represented reality order. Fictional status, plausibility and impossible exaggeration do not alone answer that question.
- What temporal structure is explicitly described?
The steps offer an order of analysis, not an asserted real-time sequence of mental events. Read the particular example sequence separately from the historical development.
- How can the description be tested?
An unusual event is not necessarily a violation of natural law. A character's astonishment does not establish a miracle. Nor should a narrow modern genre category be substituted for the whole historical field of the marvellous.
Historical context
The inherited HWdR article spans religious and aesthetic contexts. Todorov's narrower merveilleux is presented as one later framework, not the original or exhaustive meaning of all earlier uses.
Cross-language distinction and terminology
Wonderful commonly means excellent in everyday English. The marvellous is chosen for the specialist heading, with miracle and wonder kept distinct when their additional commitments matter.
Scholarly comparisons and distinctions
These entries are editorial comparison anchors for the distinctions made in this article. They are not new canonical relation edges or shared register results.
Proposed thought pathway
- Describe the represented occurrence.
- Identify its reality frame and expected explanation.
- Distinguish surprise from supernatural interpretation.
- Test how another genre or audience changes the claim.
An editorial exploration, not a necessary sequence of thought or experimental evidence of an effect.
Source scope and provenance
Both specialist versions are editorially accepted. The recorded scope of the reference-work research is retained; this is not a fresh full verification of every primary source. Examples and analytical steps are Atlas applications.