That Herman Melville was a philosophical fiction writer may be generally accepted, but the implications of this definition are unclear. In Melville's Muse, John Wenke discusses what it means - both biographically and textually - for Melville to combine philosophy and aesthetics.

Wenke focuses on Melville's failures and successes in developing fictional forms to contain and express metaphysical speculations. He examines how the author appropriated and transformed elements of his Calvinist-Lutheran heritage; his eclectic reading in ancient, Renaissance, and contemporary writings; his Romantic Zeitgeist; and his cultural and political milieu.

Through his analysis, he clearly shows that consciously articulated life choices led Melville to create texts that are both derivative and revolutionary.

This study offers a new interpretation of some existing materials but also provides many specific discoveries of Melville's use of Plato, Francois Rabelais, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Thomas Carlyle, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. It combines traditional historicism with contemporary theoretical practice, resulting in an interdisciplinary jargon-free critical narrative.

Of particular interest to specialists in Melvillean studies, American Romanticism, and 19th-century American literature, it also will appeal to scholars of philosophy and literature, literature and culture, and literary criticism.