Alternate History (eBook)

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Kathleen Singles, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Kathleen Singles, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.

1 Introduction 9
1.1 Contexts: Alternate Histories and Future Narratives 9
1.2 Methodology 12
1.3 Proceedings and Theses 14
1.4 Selection of Primary Sources 18
1.4.1 Medium vs. Genre 18
1.4.2 The International Spectrum 19
2 The Poetics of Alternate History 22
2.1 ‘History’ in Alternate History 34
2.1.1 The Postmodern Challenge to History 34
2.1.2 Referentiality: Possible-worlds Theory 41
2.1.3 ‘History’ as the Normalized Narrative of the Past 51
2.1.4 The Selection and Emplotment of Historical Events in Alternate History 56
2.1.5 Nineteenth-century Paradigms of History in Alternate History 64
2.2 Alternate History and Other Kinds of Past Narrative 66
2.2.1 The Epistemology of History: Alternate History in the Context of Postmodern Historical Fiction 66
2.2.2 Alternate Histories versus Secret History, “Plot-type” Counterfactual Histories, and Historical Fiction with “neokausale Verfremdungsverfahren” 81
2.2.3 Alternate Histories versus ‘framed’ Alternate Histories 89
2.2.4 Alternate History versus Counterfactual History 93
2.2.5 Hybrids and Overlap 104
2.2.5.1 The ‘Y’: Structure vs. Reception Models 104
2.2.5.2 Alternate History as Fantasy 107
2.2.5.3 Alternate History as Science Fiction 111
2.3 Alternate History and Future Narrative 117
2.3.1 Activation of the Reader: Text Strategies of Alternate History 117
2.3.2 Alternate History as Non-interactive game: Points of Divergence versus Nodes 127
2.3.3 Bifurcation vs. Divergence from History 129
2.3.3.1 Alternate History versus Forking-paths Narratives 129
2.3.3.2 Alternate-history FNs 132
2.3.4 The Paradox of Alternate History: Contingency and Necessity 137
2.3.5 The ‘Open’ Alternate History? 142
2.3.5.1 The Open Artwork 142
2.3.5.2 The Closed Alternate History 146
3 Case Studies 155
3.1 Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle 155
3.1.1 The Alternate History 155
3.1.2 Piecing It All Together: the Exposition 156
3.1.3 The Alternate History within the Alternate History 163
3.1.4 The Nature of Reality 169
3.1.5 Human Agency 173
3.2 The ‘Flawed’ Alternate History: Philip Roth’s The Plot against America 177
3.2.1 Roth’s Novel as Alternate History 177
3.2.2 The Alternate-history Autobiography: the National/Political and the Familial/Personal Stages 181
3.2.3 Undermined Authenticity 187
3.2.4 The Question of Causal Logic 192
3.3 Of Dead Messiahs and Alaskan Dreams: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union 197
3.3.1 Alternate History Integrated 197
3.3.2 The Detective Game 199
3.3.3 “Strange times to be a Jew”: in Search of a Homeland 205
3.3.3.1 Yiddishland 205
3.3.3.2 Trouble in Yiddishland: “No future here for any Jew” 208
3.3.4 The Chess Metaphor 212
3.3.4.1 Zugzwang 212
3.3.4.2 Landsman Plays 213
3.3.4.3 Others Play: Saviors and Holy Lands 216
3.3.5 Stories Already Told 220
3.4 Time Travel and “to the present”: Stephen Fry’s Making History 223
3.4.1 A New Take on a Popular Premise 223
3.4.2 “The true story of what never happened”: Making Sense of Making History 227
3.4.3 The Meisterwerk and Mastering Academia 231
3.4.4 The Historian as God? Agency, Free Will, and Determinism 234
3.4.5 Historical Sensitivity 238
3.5 An Exceptional Hybrid: Dieter Kühn’s N 241
3.5.1 Alternate History as FN 241
3.5.2 The Structure of a ‘True’ Forking-paths Alternate History 243
3.5.3 The Historiographical Shortcomings of the Past Narrative 245
3.5.4 Big Plans, Little N 249
3.5.5 The Narrator as ‘Great Man’? 252
3.6 The Mock Alternate History: Inglourious Basterds 255
3.6.1 A New Kind of World-War-II Movie, a New Kind of Alternate History 255
3.6.2 Contingency and the Point of Divergence 257
3.6.3 Metacinema: Competing Director-figures in the Film 261
3.6.4 The Art of Direction: Authority and Authorization of the Film 268
3.7 Alternate History as Apotheosis of Representation: Christian Kracht’s Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten 271
3.7.1 Krachtian Alternate History 271
3.7.2 School of KrachtKracht, Christian (Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten) 273
3.7.3 Hyperreality and Alternate History 275
3.7.4 Rauchsprache – Krachtsprache 277
3.7.5 Literary Evolution? 280
3.7.6 Regress and Dissolution 283
4 Conclusion 287
4.1 What if this study had never been written? 287
4.2 The History (and Future) of Alternate History 290
Works Cited 293
Primary Literature 293
Secondary Literature 297
Studies on Indivudual Works 304
Index 318

"Still, Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity is recommended reading for those interested in the burgeoning field of alternate-history studies."
Francisco J. López Arias in: Science Fiction Studies 3/2016