This chapter is concerned with the ways in which art engenders social change. Georges Sorel's theory of social myth provides a framework for linking social change, which takes place in material reality, with the action scenarios presented in an art text, and with the ethos of that art text. Developed around the turn of the nineteenth century, Sorel's concept of social myth is a representative example of the interest of modernist philosophies in art as a form of social praxis. Not only can we use Sorel's theory to analyse artistic and literary production, but the ethos of this theory can provide the basis for understanding the ethos of modernist art work, and the ethos of the artists as labourers. An analysis of the artistic labour of James Joyce and W. B. Yeats in this perspective provides a test case for a more encompassing understanding of art as a form of praxis deeply implicated in social change, and of the links between the energies mobilised by aesthetic recreations of the world and the violence of action.