Search results
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which reached publication in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death. [2] Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, Thelma, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction ...
I hesitate to use the word comedy -- though comedy it is -- because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that. A great rumbling farce of Falstaffian dimensions would better describe it; commedia would be closer to it. It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from -- from the
Awards And Honors: Pulitzer Prize (1981) A Confederacy of Dunces, comic novel by John Kennedy Toole, published in 1980. “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”. The quote is by the satirist Jonathan Swift, and the unlikely genius at the center of Toole’s ...
Historical Context of A Confederacy of Dunces. A Confederacy of Dunces is set in the American South in the 1960s and deals with several cultural and political issues of the period, such as racism and paranoia about communism. In the mid-20th century, America was engaged in the Cold War—a large-scale nuclear stand-off—with Russia, a ...
May 1, 1980 · A Confederacy of Dunces is a rambling, aimless, comedic novel centered on Ignatius J. Reilly, a buffoonish overweight man-child with poor fashion sense, worse social skills, and deplorable hygiene. Through 400 pages – which is relatively long for a book in which nothing happens – we follow Ignatius through various minor misadventures ...
A Confederacy of Dunces Summary. The plot of A Confederacy of Dunces is a knotted, tangled, ridiculous thing. Following it is like unraveling a giant ball of yarn wrapped around a very fat man with a moustache and a funny hat who keeps falling over. So have patience… and watch out for toppling medievalists.
A Confederacy of Dunces Summary. Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese young man dressed in a hunting cap and other strange attire, waits for his mother, Irene, outside of a department store in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ignatius is a medieval scholar who despises the modern world. While Ignatius waits, a policeman— Patrolman Mancuso —approaches and ...
