Catherine Driscoll wrote:
> When people use postmodernism in
> the most sweeping modes they not only wipe out more distinctions and
> contradictions than say Romantic does -- and are mostly attempting to name
> a much wider range of fields
Your general point may or may not hold, but you picked a very bad example to illustrate it. Of all the terms in the modern European languages there are probably few (and certainly not "postmodern") that have been used to cover such a wide field of (often contradictory) positions as "romanticism." About 90 years ago (I forget the details) a student in Paris shot a Professor who was lecturing on romanticism because he (the student) disagreed with the political implications of "romanticism." If I remember correctly, he shot him during his lecture. At one time the historian of ideas. A.O. Lovejoy, contemplated writing a history of the idea of romanticism and gave it up as an impossible task. He did publish (I think -- I haven't checked on this) containing a number of preliminary essays for the study. "Augustan" is not quite so loose a term -- but I wrote my dissertation in that area, and the range of its application and the variety of its meanings were astounding. There are books treating the term as key for 80 years of English literature, and scores of essays saying it has no meaning whatever.
Carrol