[PDF] Alternative History and World War II

[PDF] War, Counterfactual History, and Alternate-History Novels - Field Day

of alternate history, and he was the first to or the special providences of Christians, the subjugation of all the world's peoples to a

[PDF] Mere Christianity - By CS Lewis Contents

Theology or even of ecclesiastical history which ought never to be is no controversy between Christians which needs to be so delicately touched as this

[PDF] What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What - Bookmarks Magazine

history and that every decision, no mat- Alternate histories of World War II tend to fo- for supremacy while Christianity and the West remain a

[PDF] Alternative History and World War II - MatheO

literature and without whom the reflection on “conservative/subversive” would not have come 1 1 2 1 Terminology: Uchronia, alternate history or alternative history? This is clearly visible when Philip refers to the Christians: “A swarm of

PDF document for free

PDF document for free

[PDF] Alternative History and World War II - MatheO

7141_5Aurore_Divoy_Master_Thesis.pdf http://lib.uliege.behttps://matheo.uliege.be Alternative History and World War II: Subversive or Conservative?A Case Study of Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Harris' Fatherland and Roth's The Plot

Against AmericaAuteur : Divoy, AurorePromoteur(s) : Delville, MichelFaculté : Faculté de Philosophie et LettresDiplôme : Master en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité didactiqueAnnée académique : 2018-2019URI/URL : http://hdl.handle.net/2268.2/8341Avertissement à l'attention des usagers : Tous les documents placés en accès ouvert sur le site le site MatheO sont protégés par le droit d'auteur. Conformément

aux principes énoncés par la "Budapest Open Access Initiative"(BOAI, 2002), l'utilisateur du site peut lire, télécharger,

copier, transmettre, imprimer, chercher ou faire un lien vers le texte intégral de ces documents, les disséquer pour les

indexer, s'en servir de données pour un logiciel, ou s'en servir à toute autre fin légale (ou prévue par la réglementation

relative au droit d'auteur). Toute utilisation du document à des fins commerciales est strictement interdite.Par ailleurs, l'utilisateur s'engage à respecter les droits moraux de l'auteur, principalement le droit à l'intégrité de l'oeuvre

et le droit de paternité et ce dans toute utilisation que l'utilisateur entreprend. Ainsi, à titre d'exemple, lorsqu'il reproduira

un document par extrait ou dans son intégralité, l'utilisateur citera de manière complète les sources telles que

mentionnées ci-dessus. Toute utilisation non explicitement autorisée ci-avant (telle que par exemple, la modification du

document ou son résumé) nécessite l'autorisation préalable et expresse des auteurs ou de leurs ayants droit.

Université de Liège

Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres

Département de Langues modernes :

Linguistique, littérature et traduction

Alternative history and World War II:

Subversive or conservative?

A case study of The Man in the High Castle

Fatherland The Plot Against America

Travail de DIVOY Aurore

orientation germaniques à finalité didactique

Promoteur : Prof. Michel Delville

_____________________________________________________________________________

Année académique 2018-2019

Acknowledgments

Contingency, uncertainty, chaos, were certainly words that I often encountered during the writing

of this master thesis. Both literally, because of their obvious relevance to this field of research,

but also in a more figurative light. Indeed, it took some time to take in all those new pieces of information, to analyse those novels and to, hopefully, succeed in writing a meaningful whole. Nonetheless, I derived much pleasure from trying to establish new connections and to add as many nuances as possible to this work. Of course, during this process, I had the chance to be guided by a Professor whose general and literary considerations have always awaken profound respect and admiration on my behalf. I address my thanks to Professor Delville, without whom this subject will not have been known to me. Your remarks always pushed me in new directions that I had left unexplored and I am grateful to have had many enlightening discussions and classes with you. My thanks also go to both jury members, Laura Gerday and Patricia Willson. I thank you for the effort you put reading this work and enabling this work to evolve through your useful and critical remarks. I know that this theme is not usual but I hope you enjoy the content and form of this master thesis and that it will open up new pathways for you. In this thesis there are traces of so many classes and Professors that have helped me to discover concepts and works which have left a lasting impression upon my mind. I would like to address special thanks to Mrs. Ledent whose influence has profoundly shaped my view of to be. Besides this academic support and the major impact of my professors, I also would like to thank people who have supported me on a more personal level. I thank my family and closest friends for believing in me, even when I doubted as to where this thesis would actually lead. I also thank all these classmates and acquaintances with whom I have talked and who have shared their insights. I thank those people and friends with whom I have spent so many hours at the library or those who simply helped me grow and become the person I am today. there is my work, and that it is just here for you to appreciate, comment and criticize. someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident.

And our lives, our world, hanging on it.

Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 The Genres of Alternative history ............................................................................ 3

1.1.1 Alternative history - a broader context ................................................................. 3

1.1.2 Alternative history as a literary genre .................................................................. 10

1.1.2.1 Terminology: Uchronia, alternate history or alternative history? ................... 10

1.1.2.2 Uchronia and utopia ......................................................................................... 11

1.1.2.3 Alternatiǀe history͛s link with science-fiction .................................................. 13

1.1.2.4 A matter of classification .................................................................................. 18

2 Corpus and genre meta-text ........................................................................... 24

2.1 Porosity and metafiction ......................................................................................... 24

2.2 World War II ..................................................................................................................28

2.2.1 Heroes .................................................................................................................. 29

2.2.2 Wars ..................................................................................................................... 30

2.2.3 Empires and Americas .......................................................................................... 32

2.2.4 World War II ......................................................................................................... 38

2.3 Corpus ............................................................................................................................ 41

3 Case study ............................................................................................................ 48

3.1 Paratext ........................................................................................................................ 48

3.1.1 Epitext................................................................................................................... 50

3.1.2 Peritext ................................................................................................................. 54

3.1.2.1 At the interstice of the text .............................................................................. 55

3.1.2.2 Author͛s note, acknowledgments .................................................................... 60

3.2 Metafiction ....................................................................................................................64

3.2.1 The detective plot ................................................................................................ 65

3.2.2 Narrative and storytelling .................................................................................... 68

3.2.3 Mise en abyme ..................................................................................................... 73

3.2.3.1 The Grasshopper Lies Heavy ............................................................................. 74

3.2.3.2 Literature and the act of writing ...................................................................... 78

3.2.3.3 Counterfactual thinking .................................................................................... 80

3.3 Banal nationalism and cultivation of culture ........................................ 83

3.3.1 Namings, statues and portraits ............................................................................ 85

3.3.2 Propaganda, absorption and assimilation............................................................ 88

3.4 History ............................................................................................................................ 93

3.4.1 Historicity ............................................................................................................. 93

3.4.2 Losers and winners ............................................................................................... 96

4 Between subversive and conservative ......................................................... 98

5 Works Cited ......................................................................................................... 103

5.1 Primary sources: ...................................................................................................... 103

5.2 Secondary sources: ................................................................................................. 103

ANNEXES ................................................................................................................... 108

Map 1 ......................................................................................................................... 108

Map 2 ........................................................................................................................ 108

Map 3 ........................................................................................................................ 109

1 Introduction

It all began with the reading of one peculiar novel: All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. It is

through this specific novel, which includes three different universes at the same time all

provoked by one divergence (a time-travel by Tom Barren, the protagonist); that I came to know what alternative history meant. Many questions then followed as I discovered the multiple implications of counterfactual thinking in general (and alternative history in particular) with If the theoretical outline of the genre/mode/device of alternative history was a primary source of interest, I soon became interested with a more practical view of alternative history. And namely, its concrete impact when allied with particular themes in fiction. The aim of this thesis is to critically engage with a corpus of three different novels which can be encompassed under the (non- 'LFN