David Ellison's book is an investigation into the historical origins and textual practice of European literary Modernism.

Preface; Part I. Kant, Romantic Irony, Unheimlichkeit: 1. Border crossings in Kant; 2. Kierkegaard on the economics of living poetically; 3. Freud's 'Das Unheimliche': the intricacies of textual uncanniness; Part II. The Romantic Heritage and Modernist Fiction: 4. Aesthetic redemption: the Thyrsus in Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Wagner; 5. The 'beautiful soul': Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes and the aesthetics of Romanticism; 6. Proust and Kafka: uncanny narrative openings; 7. Textualizing immoralism: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Gide's L'Immoraliste; 8. Fishing the waters of impersonality: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Epilogue: narrative and music in Kafka and Blanchot: the 'singing' of Josefine; Notes; Index.