The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 7

Education of Philosopher-King

In the Toole Papers at Tulane, there is a folder of college assignments from Philosophy (in 2009, it was box 2, folder 8). There is an assignment there dated 9 January 1956 submitted by Toole to Dr. Ballard in Philosophy 101. Leaf two of the assignment discusses the proper education of Plato's Philosopher-King. At age 17, the future king should engage in a ten-year study of geometry, solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics. At age 30, the student should have mastered mathematical forms and be ready to rationalize and not depend on the visible. In Confederacy, Ignatius, who is 30 years old, has toiled for many years as a student in isolation, and the plot of the novel shows him trying to go out into the world and take action.

Thesis: Discuss Ignatius as a parody of a budding Platonic Philosopher-King.

Occasional Series now a fixed web page as well as in blog

I noticed that, going on a year, no one has been following this blog, so I decided to create a version of the occasional series as a fixed web page. I published the page on the Web on April 6th, and just today (April 18th) Google found it, without me having placed a link to it in this blog. It is Ideas for Papers or Term Papers on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, the Occasional Series.

The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 6

Angel in the Wardrobe

In #4 of this series, I suggested that Toole may have gotten some of his ideas about the theory of Carnival from Robert Tallant's book Mardi Gras. Another Tallant book may have also influenced Toole’s writing of Confederacy. Ken Owen, the Louisiana Specialist at Tulane University’s Louisiana Research Collection, suggested that Confederacy can also be seen as a parody of Tallant’s melodramatic novel called Angel in the Wardrobe, also published in 1948. Whereas Tallant’s Mattie Lou receives advice from an angel in her wardrobe, Irene accepts advice from Angelo Mancuso. Whereas Tallant’s reclusive child molester, Sylvester, is committed to a mental hospital at the end of Angel, Toole’s bestial onanist, Ignatius, narrowly escapes commitment at the end of Confederacy.

Thesis: Compare the two books. There are many parallels, and the claim that Confederacy is a parody is not far-fetched.

The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 5b

More Milton

Another theme that relates Milton to Confederacy is New Orleans Carnival. The first major Krewe of Carnival is the Krewe of Comus. It is named after a court masque that Milton wrote as a young man. In that masque, Comus uses magic to turn people into monsters who are half-human, half-beast. Those transformed people cannot see their beastliness, and see themselves as god-like.

Thesis: Compare Milton's Comus masque, New Orleans Carnival, and Ignatius in Confederacy.

The Occasional Series of Ideas for Papers on John Kennedy Toole, Part 5a

John Milton and Ignatius In Confederacy, Ignatius mentions that he should end his Miltonic isolation and become engaged with the world (chapter 5, section 4, page 109 in the 1980 edition). In Samuel Johnson’s essay on Milton in his Lives of the English Poets, he makes fun of Milton. Milton makes a grand claim that he needs to return to England because he has to participate in the revolution against Charles I. But when he gets to England, he simply gets a job teaching at a private boarding school. For example, Johnson wrote: "Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-school" (page varies with edition).

Thesis: Compare Milton’s big talk and small walk to the same pattern in Ignatius’s behavior.

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.

Minor revision to Evidence of Influences

Yesterday, I revised my online paper called Evidence of Influences on John Kennedy Toole’s "A Confederacy of Dunces," Including Geoffrey Chaucer. The reason for adding W. Bedford Clark's endorsement of the paper to the PDF version was that Google Scholar did not link to the HTML page that leads to the PDF; instead, it linked directly to the PDF. So the HTML cover page can no longer act as a definitive part of the paper that can hold the current list of endorsements.

While I was editing the paper, I decided to also add a footnote regarding New Orleans Carnival. I have been working away on a new paper regarding Ignatius Reilly as a child of the planetary god Saturn. Originally, I had planned to make the connection to Carnival and Saturnalia part of that next paper, but as the paper evolved, the point about Carnival seemed to be less newsworthy and more worthy of appearing in a footnote. The footnote also caused me to add three texts to the list of references. By reducing the font size of the references and the list of changes, I have kept the paper to forty pages, but the long footnote has thrown off the pagination of the text after page 27. My apologizes to anyone who quotes from an earlier version of the paper.

Here is the text of the added footnote:

Another connection between Saturn and chaos is the New Orleans tradition of Carnival. Numerous critics have discussed the carnival elements present in Confederacy. While some have used currently popular theories of carnival such as Bakhtin (Williams chapter 5, Lowe 160, Lambert 20) and Stallybrass and White (Gatewood), Toole himself was more likely to have drawn on the popular books about the history of New Orleans Carnival published during his boyhood which reference Frazer’s Golden Bough and identify carnival with Roman Saturnalia, the feast of Saturn (Tallant 85, di Palma 14). Neither Tallant nor di Palma appears in the Toole Papers.