Description
Book SynopsisThis collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.
Trade ReviewLike a multi-faceted jewel, A Confederacy of Dunces refracts light at multiple angles, beckoning the reader to peer beneath its surface. And certainly, much is to be found within its enthralling pages. Those who look might find in the glimmering a suggestion of something more, and Theology and Geometry will certainly help the reader to see it.
* VoegelinView *
“This eclectic anthology of chapters on A Confederacy of Dunces, the first of its kind, represents a milestone event in Toole studies, bringing together a diversity of perceptive approaches to the novel. This outstanding collection should appeal to anyone wishing to increase their appreciation and understanding of Toole’s comic masterpiece. “ -- Peter McCluskey, Middle Tennessee State University
“Theology and Geometry offers an essential examination of an American Classic. As the first collection to explore John Kennedy Toole’s work, it is an original contribution to literary scholarship and further propels A Confederacy of Dunces to its rightful place in the literary canon.” -- Cory MacLauchlin, Germanna Community College and author of Butterfly in the Typewriter
Table of ContentsChapter 1: A Theory of Humor (Abridged) and the Comic Mechanisms of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces
H. Vernon Leighton
Chapter 2: The Literary Foolishness of Ignatius Reilly
Jessica Hooten Wilson
Chapter 3: ‘Amusingness Forced to Figure Itself Out’: Ignatius J. Reilly, Aesthetic Individualism, and the Modernism of Anti-Modernism
Kenneth McIntyre
Chapter 4: Theology and Geometry and Taste and Decency
Leslie Marsh
Chapter 5: The Consolation of Dunces
Stephen Utz
Chapter 6: Ignatius Reilly as the Knight of Faith
W. Kenneth Holditch
Chapter 7: John Kennedy Toole’s Queer Carnivalesque in A Confederacy of Dunces
Tison Pugh
Chapter 8: Ignatius’ Brain: Food and Sex in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces Olga Colbert
Chapter 9: Dunces and Dialogue: Ignatius J. Reilly’s Menippean Misreadings and Onanistic Annotations of Boethian Philosophy
Anthony G. Cirilla
Chapter 10: The Representation of Speech in A Confederacy of Dunces
Connie Eble
Chapter 11: Thelma Toole: As Herself
Christopher R. Harris
