Best of John Kennedy Toole Scholarship (unnumbered): Pugh, Queer Carnivalesque

I started the "Best of" series after I had read almost all of the criticism then available on A Confederacy of Dunces (ca. 2012). I ranked the criticism by my own measure of its relative quality. However, especially with the publication of Theology and Geometry, there are now many studies that would be inserted into my "Best of" list and alter the ordering. So the "Best of" list should now go unnumbered. Perhaps it should have been unnumbered from the get-go.

In February's blog post, I discussed the first half of the new collection of essays on Toole. I noted that the essay which got me to stretch my thinking the most was McIntyre's. In the second half, one essay I found especially interesting was Tison Pugh's study on Toole's queer carnivalesque (or is it his queering of the carnivalesque?). This is Pugh's third essay on the queer aspects of Confederacy (although the second is a revision of the first). All three are solid contributions to the field, and I recommend them. I would like to discuss Dr. Pugh's latest essay here.

Citation: Pugh, Tison. "John Kennedy Toole’s Queer Carnivalesque in A Confederacy of Dunces." In Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. Edited by Leslie Marsh (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), pp 105-122.

Annotation: I particularly like this essay in the collection, because Pugh opens by defending the theory of carnival put forward by Bakhtin. In my own essay, I discuss Bakhtin and argue that the theory of carnival put forward in James Frazer's Golden Bough is a better framework for interpreting Confederacy than is Bakhtin's theory. Pugh begins by assuming that Bakhtin's theory of carnival is the correct theory with which to study carnival. He then shows that Bakhtin's theory does not fit Confederacy. He argues that Toole "queered" carnival by portraying it in a way contrary to Bakhtin. So Toole transgressed the theory that carnival is transgressive. In this double negative way, Pugh perhaps unintentionally agrees with me that Confederacy does not fit Bakhtin's theory of carnival.

On a practical level one can see the effect of this implicit rejection: Pugh agrees that the end of the book holds up the theme of rebirth and renewal. He just skips over the fact that that theme supports Fraser's theory of carnival. Thanks Tison!