Raptus
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The Latin Raptus has some specific meanings not fully captured by its English equivalent "rapture", which currently has accrued among certain Christian millennarian sects additional connotations of End Times transport of redeemed Christians, which are treated at Rapture.
Raptus has two connotations derived from its classical origins, one spiritual and poetical, the inspired vision granted to a prophet (Ezekiel, Daniel) or to a poet stemming from his invocation of the Muses (Hesiod, Virgil)— or in apocalyptic literature to a writer combining both natures, such as the author of Revelation—the other possessive and physical (raptus virginum Sabinarum). As the Sabine virgins were raped and abducted so the poet was abducted by the source of his inspiration— transported. This article treats both senses.
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[edit] Spiritual and rhetorical raptus
The sense of ecstasy transport, or exaltation that are described in modern days as an out-of-body experience, and the trance that medical usage has adopted to describe epileptic seizures were described by classical poets and analyzed by the literary critic we call Longinus in his essay On the Sublime.
One famous example of a literary 'Raptus' is the one that (possibly) kills the main character in Dario Fo's 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist'.
[edit] Raptus as abduction
In social life and reflected in the Roman law, the Roman concept of raptus was quite different from the modern definition of rape. In Rome, raptus meant "carrying off by force;" it was a crime of property and included thefts of all kinds. If violence was at times a necessary component of this crime, sexual intercourse was not. So the "rapes" of mythology, which art historian Susan Brownmiller denotes "heroic rapes", are better translated as "abductions" and the abductee as a form of cultural property.
In Catholic canon law, the impediment of raptus indicates abduction or, more precisely, abduction with an intention to compel the woman to marry. This is currently an impediment to marriage while the woman remains in the power of her abductor; at times, it has been an impediment regardless of whether she was subsequently freed. (Although in theory a man could maintain that he was subjected to this crime, preventing a marriage, all recorded cases have been of abducted women.)
[edit] See also
- Rape, in its sexual and ethical sense, divorced from raptus
- Biblical inspiration
- Sublimity
- Apocalyptic literature
