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Dystopian Alternative History in Jack Thorne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Nicholas Wright’s His Dark Materials, and Stephen Briggs’ Night Watch in Light of Possible World

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Last updated: 29 Dec 2024

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Abstract

Jack Thorne's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016), Nicholas Wright's His Dark Materials (2003), and Stephen Briggs's Night Watch (2004) are three plays which are adapted from the well-known fantasy novels: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy and Terry Pratchett's Night Watch. This paper attempts to provide a reading of these adapted plays in light of Marie-Laure Ryan's version of Possible Worlds Theory. To do so, the paper analyzes the three plays from Ryan's point of view by highlighting the concepts of “plurality of worlds," “alternate (alternative) history," “moments of divergence," “grandfather paradox" and dystopian alternative history. It further demonstrates the theory's major themes like the counterfactual history, changing history, and time-travel themes. The paper discusses how Ryan's concept of altering the history is powerfully utilized in the three plays; whereas Thorne and Briggs change the supernatural recorded histories of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Night Watch, Wright, in His Dark Materials, changes the natural history of the Reformation era in a fantastical mold. The paper concludes that despite the different perspectives of the three addressed works, the results of changing history are dystopian

DOI

10.21608/ijahr.2023.238964.1029

Keywords

Possible Worlds Theory (PWT), plurality of worlds, actual history, alternate (alternative) history, dystopian alternative history

Authors

First Name

ebtahal

Last Name

elshaikh

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Associate Professor of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages Faculty of Education, Tanta University, Egypt

Email

ebtahal.elshaikh@edu.tanta.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

ghada

Last Name

mohamed

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Lecturer of English Literature Department of Foreign Languages Faculty of Education Tanta University, Egypt

Email

ghada.mohamed@edu.tanta.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Hagar

Last Name

Saleh

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Department of Foreign Languages Faculty of Education Tanta University ,Egypt

Email

hagersalah2023@gmail.com

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-

Orcid

-

Volume

3

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

42443

Issue Date

2023-12-01

Receive Date

2023-09-25

Publish Date

2023-12-01

Page Start

158

Page End

171

Online ISSN

2812-5940

Link

https://ijahr.journals.ekb.eg/article_326769.html

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https://ijahr.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=326769

Order

326,769

Type

Original Article

Type Code

2,413

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

International Journal of Advanced Humanities Research

Publication Link

https://ijahr.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Dystopian Alternative History in Jack Thorne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Nicholas Wright’s His Dark Materials, and Stephen Briggs’ Night Watch in Light of Possible Worlds Theory

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Article

Created At

29 Dec 2024