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). Here is item number seventeen:
Citation: Simmons, Jonathan. "Ignatius Reilly and the Concept of the Grotesque in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces." Mississippi Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1989): 33-43.
Annotation: This paper is, as the title indicates, a deep study of the concept of 'grotesque' in relation to Confederacy. Simmons explores the origins of the word grotesque, the Roman caves or grottos, which during the Renaissance were discovered to have images of bizarre and distorted figures. Simmons argues that the medieval era did not have a concept of the grotesque, because thinkers in that era saw the world as carefully ordered by God (36). Needless to say, this ignores examples of the medieval grotesque such as some of the characters in Chaucer’s writings (about which Toole himself was quite familiar, see my own Evidence of influences). Simmons then offers a stereotype of the Renaissance as favoring the grotesque (37). Finally, there is a discussion of Jonathan Swift and a comparison of some of Swift’s themes and images to those of Toole (38-42). This section is well done, and evidence from the Toole Papers back up the hypothesis that Toole knew Swift well. Simmons argues that the animal images of Ignatius point to him being part bear (41-2). While he analyzes those images well, Simmons ignores that they are largely generalized descriptions of a mammal which could apply to a dog just as much as a bear. Considering Ignatius has sexual longings for his deceased dog Rex, the tie to dogs is probably more plausible than the tie to bears. As long as one ignores the simplistic comparison of the Renaissance with the Medieval era, this is a good article.
Because I tend to gloss over the grotesque in this novel, this paper is a good counterweight to my own interests.
