Thir song was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with
ravishment The thronging audience.
What was in the case of these remarkable persons a
ravishment, has, in innumerable instances in common life, been exhibited in less striking manner.
Joseph Sedley, who was fond of music, and soft-hearted, was in a state of
ravishment during the performance of the song, and profoundly touched at its conclusion.
All men avail themselves of such means as they can, to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, dancing, theatres, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, politics, or love, or science, or animal intoxication,--which are several coarser or finer quasi-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, which is the
ravishment of the intellect by coming nearer to the fact.
By virtue of fascinans, the numen "shows itself as something uniquely attractive and fascinating," it "entrances," "captivates," and transports the subject "with a strange
ravishment" or calls forth an experience of bliss.
Shakespeare builds up the images of pillage, exploits, death,
ravishment, tears, groans, and makes children and mothers the victims.
and one could wish that such an Arcadia might have been spared such
ravishment. But the needs of the race are insatiable and unceasing." Indeed, they were.
"Come, Philomel, that sing'st of
ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my disheveled hair.
However, he retains the unusually detailed physiological description of Mary's
ravishment partially quoted above, and how that may demonstrate bodily the experience of desire for the love of God.
It the female beloved represents Ireland in these poems, the inability to distinguish clearly between "known" and "unknown" lovers suggests dissonance in national identification as well as complicity in the national body's
ravishment.
By closely following the remarks of Andre du Laurens, rector of the medical school at Montpellier and physician to Henry IV of France, on the connection between melancholy and poetry contained in his medical treatise Discours de la conservation de la veue (1598), as translated into English by another 'practitioner in phisicke', Richard Surphlet, (56) Burton discusses Problem XXX, 1 and states that Aristotle 'said melancholy men of all others are most witty, which causeth many times a divine
ravishment, and a kinde of Enthusiasmus, which stirreth them up to bee excellent Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, &c.'.
Earlier scholars such as Bartolomeo Maranta (who published in 1564) had explicitly associated meraviglia with the epic genre, but Maranta defines the term as a simple aesthetic pleasure; (31) Tasso draws on a newer definition developed by Longinus's early translators, ultimately defining the concept as poetic astonishment or
ravishment. In his Italian translation, da Falgano translates ekplexis [astonishment, terror, or paralysis], the Longinian telos of poetry, as meraviglia.
