Fantasy has played a crucial role in shaping literature since time immemorial. Yet, proper systematic work on fantasy has not been done until the last century, when scholars began to realize its importance and give it due recognition. First published in 1970, Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre represents one of the touchstones of critical work on the fantastic genre. His pioneering ideas have inspired literary critics worldwide to develop their own premises on the genre, some of which bear Todorov’s indelible imprints. This essay attempts to chart how Todorov constructs his paradigm by means of his structuralist standpoint and how later critics, such as Christine Brooke-Rose and Rosemary Jackson, respond to his theoretical postulate. The main objective of this essay is to investigate how these theoretical dialogues, with Todorov’s model of the fantastic genre functioning as an axis, shed light on a complex notion of genre as dynamic institution, which needs to be silent enough to accommodate changes and in turn prescriptive enough to be the guideline for readers and writers alike.