Modernism and the critical spirit -- English social criticism and the spirit of reformation -- The reality of disillusion in T.S. Eliot -- The organic society of F.R. Leavis -- A postscript to the higher criticism: the case of Philip Rieff -- The formalist avant-garde and the autonomy of aesthetic values -- Aristocrats and Jacobins: the happy few in The Charterhouse of Parma -- Flaubert and the powerlessness of art -- The blasphemy of Joycean art.