Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #7

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure).

In August of 2013, I offered #2, admitting that there is a small crowd, all of which could be #2. I think that with #7, we are finally past the tie for #2, so this article is not part of that group. Here it is:

Citation: Kline, Michael. "Narrating the Grotesque: The Rhetoric of Humor in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Southern Quarterly 37, no. 3-4, (1999): 283-291.

Annotation:This article explores the mechanisms within Confederacy that generate its humor. Kline argues that the grotesque elements are not enough to carry the “extended narrative humor” (284). He uses the concept of metonomy, which he describes as the figure "responsible for the reader's perception of referential relationships of causality ..." (285) He then outlines the different narrative threads of the novel and shows how they interact. Humor is generated by the reader’s inability to foresee unusual plot connections—metonym mismatches—which are breaks in the causal chains. The reader’s pleasure comes from the balance between the dynamic plot and its grotesque disruption (288). Ignatius, he points out, is responsible for each mismatched situation. He identifies four disruptive operators: disproportion, decontextualization, irony, and inconsequentiality (289). He sees the ending as less a happy ending than “a problematic mythos of Spring …” (286). Like Clark, he points out that Ignatius has a limited understanding of Boethius, and that the narrative itself refutes Ignatius’s limited view with a deeper understanding of Boethius (287). I find Rowan Atkinson’s theory of physical comedy (in the documentary called “Funny Business,” 1992) to be more useful in discussing the novel’s humor, so while I do not agree entirely with his theory of the mechanism of the humor, this is a solid article that touches on many good points.

I am behind the times, Pugh revised his essay

Back in May, I listed as #5 in my rank ordering of John Kennedy Toole research an essay by Tison Pugh from 2006, see May 2014. Unbeknownst to me, Pugh had published in 2013 a book which contains a revised version of the essay.

The new citation is: Pugh, Tison. "'It's prolly fulla dirty stories': Queer Masculinity and Masturbatory Allegory in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Queer Chivalry: Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature. Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

I have glanced over the new essay to verify that it is in fact a revision, but I have not read it closely. The book as a whole makes an argument about southern culture and literature, and the amendations of the Toole essay seem to be focused on integrating it within Pugh's new, larger thesis. But a couple of details I did note: Pugh now states as a certain fact that Toole was gay, and instead of calling what Toole does in the novel "queering medievalism," in which queering isn't necessarily homoerotic, he now calls Confederacy pseudo-homosexuality. While the evidence does not disprove this position, I haven't seen undisputed positive proof for it either. Interesting that the book was published by Louisiana State U. Press, which also published Ignatius Rising, a book which was criticized by those close to Toole for questionable behavior by the authors and which also takes the position that Toole was gay.

Review of Reference Book entries on John Kennedy Toole and Confederacy of Dunces

Although searching the Web and using Wikipedia has often displaced going to a library and using the reference collection to look things up, scholars still trust published reference books more than freely available Web resources. But that does not mean that every entry in a reference book is excellent.

Below is a review of the entries on John Kennedy Toole and Confederacy of Dunces from several reference books.

Berman, Milton and Tracy Irons-Georges. The Eighties in America. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2008.

The article on John Kennedy Toole is poorly written and largely dependent on the Nevils and Hardy book.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale Research Company.

This reference source has excerpts from articles about late 20th century or early 21st century literature in English. There are two volumes that have entries relating to Confederacy of Dunces.

volume 19: This entry contains excerpts from: Walker Percy’s introduction, book reviews from Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, NYT Book Review, TLS. These are representative of the initial reception of the novel by critical readers. No scholarly criticism here.

volume 64: This entry includes large excerpts from the scholarly articles by McNeil and Simmons (for citations, see Other References from my annotated bibliography of Toole research). It also has book reviews for Neon Bible. While reading these excerpts might give the user some ideas about the novel, I do not recommend using the scholarly excerpts in a paper, because they give different interpretation of the novel than the originals. For example, the main thesis of the McNeil article is not included in the excerpt and the reader would misunderstand McNeil without going back to McNeil's full article.

Magill, Frank N. (Frank Northen), and Tracy Irons-Georges. Cyclopedia of World Authors. 4th rev. ed. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2004.

This article is good, but it was written before Fletcher's Ken and Thelma (2005) was published. It takes ideas from McNeil's 1984 article on Toole's use of reverse satire.

Travisano, Thomas. "The Confederacy of Dunces." In Masterplots II: American Fiction Series. Edited by Frank Magill. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1986, I-319-324.

The summary and perspective are good but not excellent. The entry misses some aspects of the book. Travisano is correct that Confederacy has a traditional comic structure. The bibliography is very poor and should not be used.

Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, the Occasional Series, Part 21

Thesis #21: Myrna as Leftist Humanist

My work with Toole's Confederacy of Dunces and Ficino has not caused a huge buzz of activity surrounding the topic, or at least, not a buzz that I can hear. One aspect of Confederacy and Humanism that I did not explore in the "Dialectic of American Humanism" paper, and which I had expected to appear when the chatter went viral, was the issue of more politically and socially leftist versions of 20th century humanism. I am very disappointed in all my blog followers (wait, I have no blog followers!) that I have to bring this topic up myself.

In my Dialectic paper, I discussed the influence of Paul Oskar Kristeller on John Kennedy Toole. I cited the work of James Hankins. However, Hankins also studied the ideas of Eugenio Garin, an Italian leftist, who formulated a more culturally leftist form of philosophical humanism. In Hankins's essay, "Two twentieth century interpreters of Renaissance humanism," he compares Kristeller's ideas to those of Garin. That essay is found in volume one of his opus, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance.

Within Confederacy, Myrna and her more socially leftist worldview stands as a counterweight to Ignatius and his Neoplatonic worldview, both offering a critique of mainstream American culture. This counterweight is somewhat similar to the counterweight Garin offered to the ideas of Kristeller.

Thesis: Discuss the possibility that Myrna and her worldview are a carnivalesque version of Garin's humanism. You could even speculate on why I chose not to include Garin in my own paper on Toole's use of humanism in Confederacy of Dunces.

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #6

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure).

In August of 2013, I offered #2, admitting that there is a small crowd, all of which could be #2. My pick for #6 is part of that group. Here it is:

Citation: McNeil, David. "A Confederacy of Dunces as Reverse Satire: The American Subgenre." Mississippi Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1984): 33-47.

Annotation: This is a solid article. McNeil shows that Toole used a technique in Confederacy of satirizing a satirist which he calls reverse satire. “Unlike conventional satire, reverse satire does not point to a right while ridiculing the wrong; it points to the human fallibility of naively trusting in right over wrong, or in reformative schemes” (40). Ignatius decries the consumerism of his society, but he “epitomizes the very perversions against which he rages” (35). Others have criticized this article, because it waffles between seeing Confederacy as ultimately positive and ultimately negative. Indeed, McNeil says that Confederacy is “truly comic in a positive and celebratory sense” (46), but that it “teeters on the brink of unredeemable pessimism” (47). He sees the entire reverse satire genre as deriving comic energy from a merry-go-round existence. He compares Confederacy to Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in detail and to Cook’s Sotweed Factor briefly. He calls Ignatius “a debased caricature of St. Ignatius Loyola” (43). He lists other practitioners of reverse satire such as Jonathan Swift. He does not seem to be aware of the theoretical discussion of the use of what amounts to reverse satire in the genre of parody in contrast to straight satire (for example, Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, p. 16). This lack of awareness of the parody and the carnival dimension of Confederacy is criticized effectively by Karen Williams (190). McNeil mentions that Confederacy is an hegelian dialectic, but he doesn't say what theme it handles dialectically.

Just trying to make an honest living

The fine folks at scribd.com are selling copies of my paper, "Evidence of Influences on John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces', including Geoffrey Chaucer," for a mere $8.99. This despite the fact that I give away the paper free on my website. This behavior reminds me of the accounting firms that sell copies of the IRS publication 17, which happens to be free from the federal government. Please do not follow this link to buy my paper:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/145971576/H-Vernon-Leighton-Evidence-of-Influences-on-John-Kennedy-Toole

Follow this one instead to get the free copy:

http://course1.winona.edu/vleighton/toole/Leighton_Toole_Chaucer.html

P.T. Barum would be proud of them.

New version of Evidence of Influences on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces

My website for John Kennedy Toole Research moved to a new location. Because my "Evidence of Influences on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces" paper includes within itself its own URL, I decided it was time to create a new version of the paper. Version 2.1 includes references to MacLaughlin's Butterfly in the Typewriter, as well as an acknowledgement of my other work, such as my "Dialectic of American Humanism" paper. I have removed version 1.3 from the server and have kept a copy of version 2.0 there for download. I will try to keep a copy of 2.0 available, because it is the version that has been cited in the literature.

Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, the Occasional Series, Part 20

Thesis #20: Toole and Rowling's Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling's recent novel Casual Vacancy appears to use elements from the Frazer dying god / Saturnalia tradition: sausages and obesity (Howard Mollison), a scapegoat (Fats Wall), death associated with regeneration (Krystal and Fats having sex near Barry's grave), gender ambiguity (Sukhvinder), a mask-like obsession with looking youthful and sexy (Samantha), and a withered woman who is grotesquely sexual (Maureen). Confederacy of Dunces also shares such elements: Clyde the king of sausages, Ignatius as a mock scapegoat with gender ambiguity, Mrs. Levy's mask-like appearance, and the withered Trixie.

One huge difference is the sense of collective responsibility in Casual Vacancy. People do die in that book, and others share blame. Many people could have saved Robbie's life, but they were too wrapped up in themselves to take action. There are evil people, such as Obo, and unscrupulous ones, such as Simon Price. Fats as scapegoat takes on the sins of the community, and there are a lot of them. By comparison, Confederacy is a carnival romp with a largely happy ending.

Thesis: Compare the tragic use of Saturnalian themes in Rowling's Casual Vacancy to the comic uses thereof in Confederacy of Dunces. See if you can fit in some concepts from Marsilio Ficino (you can).

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #5

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure).

In August of 2013, I offered #2, admitting that there is a small crowd, all of which could be #2. My pick for #5 is part of that group. Here it is:

Citation: Pugh, Tison. "‘It’s Prolly Fulla Dirty Stories’: Masturbatory Allegory and Queer Medievalism in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces." Studies in Medievalism 15, (2006): 77-100.

Annotation: Pugh focuses in on the gender boundary transgressions in Confederacy (87-95). Pugh uses “queer” to mean simply any distortion of traditional sexual norms, and not necessarily a homosexual orientation. His thesis is, first, that "sexual desires disrupt normative constructions of identity and allegorical meaning within its fictions," and second, that “Ignatius's medievalism, as it estranges him from the social world around him, also models for the reader the sheer pleasure of queering medievalisms” (77). Confederacy is an allegory of perversion and a perversion of allegory. Pugh compares Ignatius to Ignatius Loyola in detail and Christ and Cain briefly. He briefly compares Confederacy to Dante’s Inferno and to Arthurian quests for a grail. While I disagree with Pugh’s ideas about Ignatius’s own motivations (I prefer those by Patteson and Sauret), he defends them well. Well done.

John Kennedy Toole Research has moved

Due to a reworking of the www.winona.edu website, I have moved my John Kennedy Toole Research html pages to a different campus server. The pages are now available at: http://course1.winona.edu/vleighton/toole/Default.html Vernon

Frazer's Dying God found Dead (or Alive)

Okay, this blog post is not directly related to Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, but it is related to the theory of Carnival that I believe Toole was using.

In 2014, the PBS series NOVA aired an episode called "Ghosts of Murdered Kings." The show discusses corpses that have been found buried in peat bogs in northern Europe. Careful study demonstrates that the bodies are of high-status individuals, possibly local kings, who were intentionally killed. Not only were they killed, they were subjected to several different kinds of fatal attack. One might have been drowned, then hung, then severely stabbed. That style of multiple death is called "overkill."

The evidence suggests that these kings were culturally Celtic. In that culture, if there was a serious failure of crops the king was taken to the local fertility goddess's sacred spot (possibly in a bog) and was overkilled to appease her.

That NOVA episode could have been written by James Frazer for his 1890s book, The Golden Bough. His work, which eventually stretched to 12 volumes in the third edition, was all about a local person being designated as the representative of a fertility god, and that person being sacrificed as the god died, in order for the god to be born again to allow the crops to return. Frazer was very influential in the early 20th century, among writers such as T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.

The URL to the NOVA epidsode is: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ghosts-murdered-kings.html

This relates to Confederacy because one theory of Carnival is that it is derived from Saturnalia, a Roman festival with some similarities to these Celtic rites. In Saturnalia, a Lord of Misrule, a representative of the god Saturn, was killed to restore the fertility of the land. Ignatius in Confederacy can be seen as a scapegoated Lord of Misrule. His almost being killed by the streetcar is a type of mock death.

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #4

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure).

In August, I offered #2, admitting that there is a small crowd, all of which could be #2. My pick for #4 is part of that group. Here it is:

Citation: Lowe, John. "The Carnival Voices of A Confederacy of Dunces." In Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina. Edited by John Lowe. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, ix, 2008, 159-190.

Annotation: This book chapter discusses the ethnic humor found in Confederacy in relation to Carnival. Like other critics, Lowe sees New Orleans portrayed as being in perpetual Carnival. Ignatius is a Lord of Misrule. Rare among critics (except Helga Beste), he discusses the theme of Ignatius being insane, pointing out the literary tradition of divine madness. Lowe uses Bakhtin’s theory of Carnival and draws parallels between Ignatius and Rabelais’ Gargantua in a style of Grotesque Realism. He claims the bodily humor works closely with ethnic markers. Irene is associated with chaos, and her love of alcohol references the Irish stereotype (162). Lowe discusses the resemblance between Confederacy and Melville’s White Jacket and Sterne’s Tristam Shandy. Ignatius’ valve is an oracle. Lowe notes the explicit references to Heart of Darkness. In Ignatius’s mock chivalry, Lowe compares him to Spenser’s Red Cross Knight. Lowe then speculates that Toole “likely admired and imitated” Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (167).

There are further unique discussions in this chapter: no earlier critic discussed the explicit references to Freud in the text, and Lowe is the first to suggest that the description of the decay surrounding the Reilly home echoes the Romantic poets, in particular Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ (168). He sees Ignatius as Tristan and Myrna as Isolde. Lowe then compares Confederacy to ethnic drama, such as “The Life of Riley,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Melting Pot,” and “Abie’s Irish Rose” (171-3). Humor in Confederacy comes from ethnic mixing and juxtapositions (174). Gays, lesbians, and the mentally ill are also treated as ethnic characters (183-4). The search for a scapegoat is a common theme in ethnic comedy, where all of the different groups can unite against the victim. Such dramas often end in an ethnic melee. Confederacy’s ending replays the ending of “Abie’s Irish Rose” (188). Lowe’s claim of ethnic comedy comes closer to the core of Confederacy’s slapstick humor than some other theories (such as Kline’s). Also, though Lowe doesn’t cite them, the Toole papers at Tulane confirm that Toole was familiar with Freudian ideas, that he took a graduate course in Spenser at Columbia, and that he wrote a half dozen papers on the English Romantic poets as an undergraduate.

The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 19

Thesis #19: Toole and Eugene O'Neill

In the Tulane University student magazine Carnival (no. 9, 1956) Toole discussed the fact that Yale published O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night," which he described as "a brilliant autobiographical play." The play describes the disintegration of family fortunes. "The miserly actor-father, the dissipated older brother, the vague and mercurial mother [...]" Toole stated that if it were not based on facts, it would be too melodramatic. He concludes that in the end there is "some sort of redemption for the family in general." (pp. 13-14)

Thesis: Discuss similarities and differences between O'Neill's play and Confederacy of Dunces. Does Confederacy have the same relationship to Toole's biography that "Long Day's Journey" has to O'Neill's biography?

Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship #3

As I said in June 2013, I would like to offer an annotated bibliography, one citation at a time, of the best of the scholarship on Toole's Confederacy that is findable via MLA Bibliography (as opposed to obscure).

In August, I offered #2, admitting that there is a small crowd, all of which could be #2. My pick for #3 is part of that group. Here it is:

Citation: Clark, William Bedford. "All Toole's Children: A Reading of A Confederacy of Dunces." Essays in Literature [ISSN 0360-7062] v. 14, no. 2 (1987): 269-280.

Annotation: A solid and important article. Clark argues that Confederacy’s main theme is the corruption of childish innocence. Santa was abused as a child and is abusive toward children, and she tells Irene that she should have beaten Ignatius more as a child. Ignatius plays the role of a grotesque, immature man-child (Daigrepont), and Santa eventually convinces Irene to have him committed to a mental ward, hoping they will abuse him. Further, Lana and George corrupt children with pornography, and Gus thinks of his company as a neglected child. In the history of Toole criticism, Clark is the first to point out that Ignatius only has a limited understanding of Fortune and Boethius, and that the narrative itself refutes Ignatius’s limited view by using the view of Boethius’s Lady Philosophy. The critic Wesley Britton, for example, would be incapable of writing: “We are not tied to Fortune's Wheel, but indeed play out our lives as part of a higher design which allows for the reality of free will ...” Another quote: “Properly speaking, we ought to view Toole's account of the punishment visited upon the child-molesters … as a deus ex machina only if we place adequate stress on the deus” (273). There are brief comparisons of Confederacy to Dante’s Divine Comedy (278)--with Ignatius and Gus headed for Purgatory--and Twain’s Tom Sawyer (275).