{"id":5590,"date":"2025-09-16T20:09:37","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T20:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/?post_type=books&p=5590"},"modified":"2025-10-21T15:00:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T15:00:47","slug":"the-special-view-of-history","status":"publish","type":"books","link":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/books\/the-special-view-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Special View of History"},"content":{"rendered":"

This book is a revised and expanded edition of Charles Olson\u2019s The Special View of History<\/em>. Ann Charters produced the first edition of The Special View of History<\/em> (Berkeley: Oyez, 1970), which is now out of print, when she transcribed, edited, and organized the material from a class Olson taught at Black Mountain College in 1956. Working from material in the Charles Olson Research Collection at the University of Connecticut, Ralph Maud and John Faulise have produced a revised edition that is more accurate than the first, correcting errors in transcription and including material to which Charters did not have access, such as three class presentations from 1956, several shorter sections of text, the San Francisco lecture \u201cThe Special View of History Applied to the Two \u2018Mysteries\u2019 \u2013 of Samothrace and Eleusis,\u201d and the essay \u201cDemeter.\u201d They have arranged the material chronologically for the first time, separating Olson\u2019s 1956 class preparations from material he had prepared for a book proposal on the same topic, and from the 1957 lectures he delivered in San Francisco at the invitation of Robert Duncan. In this material Olson applies Alfred North Whitehead\u2019s Process and Reality<\/em> to his thinking about history, myth, and the \u201cstance toward reality\u201d he had begun to articulate in his essay \u201cProjective Verse\u201d and other early prose. This edition also features an Introduction by Gary Grieve-Carlson and Afterword by Joshua Hoeynck.<\/p>\n

Along with Call Me Ishmael<\/em> and the essays \u201cProjective Verse\u201d and \u201cHuman Universe,\u201d The Special View of History<\/em> is Olson\u2019s most important work in prose, and his most sustained engagement with Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher whom Olson called \u201cmy great master and the companion of my poems.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":5592,"template":"","subject":[36],"browse_by_series":[],"browse_by_imprints":[],"conference":[],"class_list":["post-5590","books","type-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/books"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5640,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5590\/revisions\/5640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subject?post=5590"},{"taxonomy":"browse_by_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/browse_by_series?post=5590"},{"taxonomy":"browse_by_imprints","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/browse_by_imprints?post=5590"},{"taxonomy":"conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/conference?post=5590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}