The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 4

Theories of Carnival

As the new footnote to Evidence of Influences indicates (see posting below), several earlier critics have approached Confederacy’s use of Carnival with theories of carnival that are currently fashionable among critics. However, neither the theories of Bakhtin nor Stallybrass and White were available to Toole when he wrote Confederacy. I argue that he was likely influenced by the theory of carnival fashionable in his youth: that of James Frazer’s Golden Bough. Because the Williams, Lambert, and Gatewood theses are difficult to obtain, the most accessible discussions of carnival are in Lowe and Gillespie. Lowe discusses Bakhtin briefly.

Thesis: Compare the effectiveness of two theories of carnival for interpreting Confederacy: the Bakhtin theory of carnival as discussed in Lowe’s essay and the Frazer theory of carnival as discussed in either Tallant's book or di Palma’s book. (See Evidence of Influences for full references to these texts.) There is at least one major aspect of Frazer’s theory that Ignatius fulfills that is not discussed in Bakhtin’s theory.