Todorov was an influential theorist in narrative and genre studies. He developed the concept of "the fantastic" to describe texts where supernatural events are presented without confirmation of whether they are real or imaginary. Todorov argued the fantastic exists between the marvelous, where supernatural events are accepted as real, and the uncanny, where supernatural events receive a rational explanation. His theory of the fantastic focuses on the hesitation experienced by readers when encountering seemingly supernatural events in a text.