Through a wide-ranging selection of essays representing a variety of different media, national contexts and critical approaches, this volume provides a broad overview of the idea of work in modernism, considered in its aesthetic, theoretical, historical and political dimensions. Several individual chapters discuss canonical figures, including Richard Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein, but Modernist Work also addresses contexts that are chronologically and geographically foreign to the main stream of modernist studies, such as Swedish proletarian writing, Haitian nationalism and South African inheritors of Dada. Prominent historical themes include the ideas of class, revolution and the changing nature of women's work, while more conceptual chapters explore topics including autonomy, inheritance, intention, failure and intimacy. Modernist Work investigates an important but relatively neglected topic in modernist studies, demonstrating the central relevance of the concept of "work" to a diverse selection of writers and artists and opening up pathways for future research.

List of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgementsAn Introduction to Modernist Work John Attridge, University of New South Wales, AustraliaI The Work of Art 1. The Absolute and the Impossible Work: Franz Kafka's "The Burrow"Robert Buch, University of New South Wales, Australia2. Autonomy, Difficulty, and the Work of Literature in Wyndham Lewis's Tarr and André Gide's The CounterfeitersEmmett Stinson, University of Newcastle, Australia 3. Mimesis and the Task of the Writer for Lawrence and WoolfHelen Rydstrand, University of New South Wales, Australia II Artistic Labor4. Richard Strauss at Work in His WorksDavid Larkin, University of Sydney, Australia5. Stein's Immaterial LaborsKristin Grogan, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, UK6. Trace and Facture: Legacies of the "Ready-made" in Contemporary South African ArtAlison Kearney, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa III Representing Work and Workers 7. Joseph Conrad's Nostromo: Work, Inheritance, and Desert in the Modernist Novel Evelyn Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong 8. Magic, Modernity, and Women at WorkCaroline Webb, University of Newcastle, Australia 9. The Disclosure of Work in the Poetry of Ron SillimanChristopher Oakey, University of New South Wales, Australia IV Class Identity and Class Conflict 10. Swedish Social Modernism: The Inward and Outward Turn in Eyvind Johnson's Stad i ljusNiklas Salmose, Linnaeus University, Sweden 11. Percussion and Repercussion: The Haitian Revolution as Worker Uprising in Guy Endore's Babouk (1934) and C. L. R. James's Black Jacobins (1938) Sascha Morrell, Monash University, Australia 12. Domestic Holocaust: Michael Haneke's Intractable Class WarPaul Sheehan, Macquarie University, Australia Afterword: Work, Modernism, and Thinking Through the AestheticMorag Shiach, Queen Mary University of London, UKIndex