Examining the ways in which modernism is created within specific historical contexts, as well as how it redefines the concept of history itself, this book sheds new light on the historical-mindedness of modernism and the artistic avant-gardes. Cutting across Anglophone and less explored European traditions and featuring work from a variety of eminent scholars, it deals with issues as diverse as artistic medium, modernist print culture, autobiography as history writing, avant-garde experimentations and modernism's futurity. Contributors examine both literary and artistic modernism, combining theoretical overviews and archival research with case studies of Anglophone as well as European modernism, which speak to the current historicizing trend in modernist and literary studies.

"This new study analyses the representation of the past and the practice of historiography in the fiction and critical writings of Virginia Woolf, and draws parallels between Woolf's historiographical imagination and the thought of Walter Benjamin, German philosopher of history and key theorist of modernity"--Provided by publisher.