Melville and aesthetics

"In an original and provocative series of readings that range across Melville's career, the contributors consider not only the sources and implications of Melville's aesthetics, but the relationship between aesthetic criticism, historical analysis, and contemporary theory. The ultimate effect of the collection, the first of its kind, is to return us to the particularities of Melville's extraordinarily varied works and to transform the subject of aesthetics into an invigorating and unpredictable source of interpretive energy"--