| 释义 |
phantasmagoria|fæntæzməˈgɔərɪə|
[f. Gr. ϕάντασµα phantasm + (?) ἀγορά assembly, place of assembly.
(But the inventor of the word prob. only wanted a mouth-filling and startling term, and may have fixed on -agoria without any reference to the Greek lexicon.)]
1. A name invented for an exhibition of optical illusions produced chiefly by means of the magic lantern, first exhibited in London in 1802. (Sometimes erroneously applied to the mechanism used.)
In Philipstal's ‘phantasmagoria’ the figures were made rapidly to increase and decrease in size, to advance and retreat, dissolve, vanish, and pass into each other, in a manner then considered marvellous.
1802Gentl. Mag. June 544 Dark rooms, where spectres from the dead they raise—What's the Greek word for all this Goblinstoria? I have it pat—It is Phantasmagoria. Ibid. (end of vol.), An awful sound proclaims a spectre near, And full in sight behold it now appear..Such are the forms Phantasmagoria shows. 1805Mrs. Creevey in C. Papers, etc. (1904) I. 67 The Baron is preparing a phantasmagoria at the Pavillion. 1831Brewster Nat. Magic iv. 80 An exhibition depending on these principles was brought out by M. Philipstal in 1802, under the name of the Phantasmagoria... Spectres, skeletons, and terrific figures..suddenly advanced upon the spectators, becoming larger as they approached them, and finally vanished by appearing to sink into the ground. 1883Encycl. Brit. XV. 207 Philipstal gave a sensation to his magic lantern entertainment by lowering unperceived, between the audience and the stage, a sheet of gauze, upon which fell the vivid moving shadows of phantasmagoria.
b. Extended to similar optical exhibitions, ancient and modern.
1830Scott Demonol. ii. 59 The Almighty substituted, for the phantasmagoria intended by the witch, the spirit of Samuel. 1832Gell Pompeiana I. v. 98 Machines by which phantasmagoria and oracular prestiges were played off. 1834Lytton Pompeii ii. ix.
2. A shifting series or succession of phantasms or imaginary figures, as seen in a dream or fevered condition, as called up by the imagination, or as created by literary description.
[1803Europ. Mag. XLIII. 186 ‘The Phantasmagoria’ (title of a series of articles consisting of sketches of imaginary characters).] 1828Landor Imag. Conv. Wks. 1853 I. 345/2 The army seemed a phantasmagoria. 1835W. Irving Newstead Abbey in Crayon Misc. (1863) 347 Such was the phantasmagoria that presented itself for a moment to my imagination. 1875E. White Life in Christ ii. xii. (1878) 133 Milton's genius has filled the atmosphere with a brilliant phantasmagoria of contending angels.
3. transf. A shifting and changing external scene consisting of many elements.
1822Hazlitt Table-t. Ser. ii. v. (1869) 121 A huddled phantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, etc. 1853Kane Grinnell Exp. ix. (1856) 68 The wildest frolic of an opium-eater's revery is nothing to the phantasmagoria of the sky tonight. 1880Shorthouse J. Inglesant xxiii, Without was a phantasmagoria of terrible bright colours, and within a mental chaos and disorder without a clue.
b. A phantasmagoric figure, or something compared thereto.
1821Byron Vis. Judgm. lxxvii, The man was a phantasmagoria in Himself—he was so volatile and thin.
4. attrib.
1841Miss Mitford in L'Estrange Life (1870) III. viii. 130 There was no background to form a phantasmagoria deception, since the part plainest to be seen was the figure as it rose and sank above the paling. 1873E. Spon Workshop Receipts Ser. i. 295/1 By the aid of a gas microscope attached to a powerful phantasmagoria lantern the image can be reflected on to a screen.
Hence † phantasmagoriacal |-ˈaɪəkəl|, phantasmaˈgorial (whence -ally adv.), phantasmaˈgorian, phantasmagoric |-ˈgɒrɪk|, phantasmaˈgorical adjs., of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a phantasmagoria; hence, visionary, phantasmal; phanˈtasmaˌgorist, one who produces or exhibits a phantasmagoria.
1823Blackw. Mag. XIII. 537 Deucalion sees a *phantasmagoriacal shadow of what..forms the history of the ancient world.
1828Scott Jrnl. 17 Apr., In this *phantasmagorial place [London], the objects of the day come and depart like shadows.
1822Blackw. Mag. XII. 86 A thousand other scenes..come up *phantasmagorially or panorama-wise before us.
1827Examiner 212/2 The Will-o'-the-wisp is painted..with shadowy and *phantasmagorian power. 1870Contemp. Rev. XIV. 180 It will ever elude his grasp like..the phantasmagorian images on the canvas.
1818Coleridge in Lit. Rem. (1836) I. 139 All Rabelais' personages are *phantasmagoric allegories. 1883Symonds Shaks. Predec. i. (1900) 5 The phantasmagoric brilliancy of shows at Court.
1852Hawthorne Blithedale Rom. Pref. (1879) 6 To establish a theatre..where the creatures of his brain may play their *phantasmagorical antics.
1816J. Lawrence in Monthly Mag. XLII. 298 Whether..it can possibly be worth while..for our chemists, or rather for our *phantasmagorists to repeat any of the old palingenesian experiments? 1862Lytton Str. Story lxxi, Those arch phantasmagorists, the philosophers who would leave nothing in the universe but their own delusions. |