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In a Time Magazine review [1] of the new Scorsese documentary "No Direction Home" I came across the word "postromantic."
First Dylan reconfigured the folk song into a political statement as personal as it was universal, writing instant anthems like Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin'. Then he amped up his surreal postromantic ballads and became a rock star.
The closest entry in my dictionary is :
postero-
prefix.
Posterior.
"Posterosuperior."
Obviously though, this word "postromantic" is a compound of "imposture" and "mantic" meaning "pseudo-shamanistic" or thereabouts.
Does any one have an entry for it?
By the way, it crops up a review of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (reviewed by none other than the Enigmatic Man, Thomas Pynchon) :
In the postromantic ebb of the 70's and 80's, with everybody now so wised up and even growing paranoid about love, once the magical buzzword of a generation, it is a daring step for any writer to decide to work in love's vernacular, to take it, with all its folly, imprecision and lapses in taste, at all seriously-- that is, as well worth those higher forms of play that we value in fiction.
[1] Richard Corliss, "When He Was On His Own" Time Magazine, September 19, 2005
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I'm assuming you're joking, right? The word is obviously post-romantic.
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No, I disagree.
If the word is "post-romantic" it would have to refer to the period after the Romantic movement. Romanticism is a proper noun, the late 18-century movement in the arts and literature, and would have been capitalized.
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Aren't you overanalyzing this? consider:
romantic 4 a : marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized b often capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of romanticism c : of or relating to music of the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities and freedom of form; also : of or relating to a composer of this music
Merriam-Webster Online (MWC-10)
(please note the "often capitalized")
hence, postromantic (also listed in MWC-10 under examples of post-) == after this period
and this, from the Encarta Encly., shows the transferral to literature -
Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881; Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952), by one of Brazil’s greatest writers, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, initiated the postromantic phase of Brazilian literature. The novels and short stories of Machado de Assis explored the dark corners of human nature, relationships, and 19th-century Brazilian society, often focusing on madness and self-delusion.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2005 © 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
or (and I hesitate to suggest this) google postromantic (or post-romantic, for orders of magnitude more ghits).
[edit for spelling]
Last edited by tsuwm; 10/21/2005 5:30 AM.
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so now the question becomes: Why is this term being applied to a 1960s folk-singer? perhaps because folk-singing (by tradition) was pretty much stuck in "the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities". I'm just guessing now; I'm no musicologist. edit: drat, another mispelll.. 
Last edited by tsuwm; 10/21/2005 5:58 AM.
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I eat my hat.
After looking at it again, it can only be post-romantic, which is disappointing, personally. I imagine "postro-" would be a not entirely useless prefix. It has something "pseudo-" and "quasi-" don't quite capture.
"I am growing tired of your postro-literary affectations."
Oh well.
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HL --
You are certainly a good sport! I hope your hat was somewhat palatble.
Now I have a definitional question. Since this involved music peripherally, is it a mondegreen?
TEd (inquiring mind and all that)
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Mondegreen! I didn't know there was a word for that!
I guess it is a kind of border-line mondegreen.
But here's one. The Jimi Hendrix song Purple Haze has the line "excuse me while I kiss the sky" not uncommonly misheard as "excuse me while I kiss this guy".
It's the idea that anyone could think Jimi Hendrix was somekind of psychedelic homoeroticist that cracks me up.
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Quote:
But here's one. The Jimi Hendrix song Purple Haze has the line "excuse me while I kiss the sky" not uncommonly misheard as "excuse me while I kiss this guy".
That's pretty much the modern classic example of mondegreens. There's even a web site.
Last edited by Faldage; 10/21/2005 10:52 PM.
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"There's a bathroom on the right" ?
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TEd
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