Euphues and the anatomy of influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius.

Euphues and the anatomy of influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius. FLANNERY O'CONNOR ONCE QUIPPED, "WHENEVER I'M ASKEDWHY Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing aboutfreaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one"(44). Frequently cited as an example of her wry wit as often as it isused as a gloss on her narrative concerns, O'Connor's famouscomment also reminds readers that a penchant for keen observation--theability "to recognize" a person or situation--is aprerequisite for good fiction. No doubt John Kennedy Toole John Kennedy Toole (December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces.Toole's novels remained unpublished during his lifetime. identifiedwith O'Connor for other reasons, such as their Catholic andSouthern common backgrounds, but their shared ability to exposehypocrisy and the absurd through techniques that include irony, parody,understatement and hyperbole best establish this literary kinship. ThatO'Connor became one of Toole's heroes during his short life istherefore not surprising. Grotesque and dark humor, however, are patterns that have alreadybeen applied with success to A Confederacy Confederacy,name commonly given to the Confederate States of America(1861–65), the government established by the Southern states of the United States after their secession from the Union. of Dunces, most recently byMichael Kline, although Jonathan Simmons was the first to make thecomparison. Far less has been said concerning this pattern in The NeonBible, a pattern that unfortunately remains more caustic than comic,falling short of O'Connor's mastery of the form. Still, thesebeginnings reveal much about Toole's artistic development when readagainst his later novel. The fundamental turn in these texts is fromtragedy to comedy, from the serious to the satiric. David McNeil, forexample, discusses the novel's debt to English satire, especiallyto the writings of Swift and Pope. While one normally does not mentionSouthern American grotesque fiction and Augustan satire in the samebreath, I contend that these were the very sorts of connections Toolewas making during those crucial developmental years, ones he would adaptwith great success to his mature fiction. This process, a doublyreflexive transition, is one of my concerns. A brief review ofToole's juvenile work with respect to O'Connor and thegrotesque is needed to develop this connection, but the transitionalfigure that I would like to examine first and more extensively is theElizabethan poet and playwright John Lyly, a figure often associatedwith the rise of the novel, whose humor was the focus of Toole'sundergraduate thesis at Tulane and Master's thesis at Columbia.Further insight into the development of A Confederacy of Dunces may comeby comparing Lyly's flamboyant and affected style, which came to beknown as Euphuism, to the ostentatious speech and mannerisms ofToole's Ignatius J. Reilly. Despite several memorable dramatic works, Euphues: The Anatomy ofWit (1578) is Lyly's most famous text. One of the many reasonsIgnatius Reilly makes readers laugh is that his speech is entirelyinconsistent with the situations in which he finds himself. Simplysaying that he is speaking in an inappropriate register or employing thewrong level of formality fails to describe the ridiculous proportions ofhis rhetorical excesses. Barbara Fennell and John Bennett have analyzedthis bifurcation BifurcationA term used in finance that refers to a splitting of something into two separate pieces.Notes:Generally, this term is used to refer to the splitting of a security into two separate pieces for the purpose of complex taxation advantages. from a sociolinguistic so��ci��o��lin��guis��tics?n. (used with a sing. verb)The study of language and linguistic behavior as influenced by social and cultural factors.so perspective, pointing out thatIgnatius fails to navigate his diverse and exotic locale successfullybecause he does not recognize that discrete speech communities interactusing different "codes" and "channels." Euphues is adidactic discourse on the dangers of romantic love but the Euphuisticstyle gets its name from the elevated and Latinate poetic dictionattributed to John Lyly. Greek for "of good natural parts,graceful, witty," Lyly probably got the term from RogerAscham's The Scholemaster (1570), an appropriate literary heritagefor Ignatius Reilly, whose name evokes the patron saint of education.Ascham defines Euphues as follows: "Euphues is he that by goodnessof wit and applicable by readiness of will, to learning, having allother qualities of the mind and parts of the body that must another dayserve learning" (OED OEDabbr.Oxford English DictionaryNoun 1. OED - an unabridged dictionary constructed on historical principlesO.E.D., Oxford English Dictionary ). Shakespeare would later satirize sat��i��rize?tr.v. sat��i��rized, sat��i��riz��ing, sat��i��riz��esTo ridicule or attack by means of satire.satirizeor -riseVerb[-rizing, the styleby having Falstaff speak using Euphuism in Henry the Fourth, Part One(circa 1596) as he imitates the king, but the technique has beenrecognized in other plays as well. Toole's familiarity with Lylyhas not been explored, although his appreciation--and ultimately hisparody--of Lyly's ornamented diction and strained syntax must beconsidered by serious readers who want a more complete understanding ofToole's work. Examples from other Lyly texts further demonstrate his influence onToole: Endymion (1588), Mother Bombie (1588), and Love'sMetamorphosis (circa 1588-90) provide suggestive evidence. Love'sMetamorphosis, for example, is frequently concerned with the corporeal Possessing a physical nature; having an objective, tangible existence; being capable of perception by touch and sight.Under Common Law, corporeal hereditaments are physical objects encompassed in land, including the land itself and any tangible object on it, that can be body, health, desire, and the tension between the autoerotic and thesocial, issues taken to extremes in A Confederacy of Dunces. By alsolooking to Harold Bloom's critical standard, The Anxiety ofInfluence (1973), James Olney's more recent work on autobiography,or "lifewriting," and Toole's Tulane thesis on Lyly, Ihope to lay bare to make bare; to strip.- Bacon.See also: Lay a more precise "anatomy" of a few ofToole's creative influences. Even as a child, Toole was naturally mimetic mimetic/mi��met��ic/ (mi-met��ik) pertaining to or exhibiting imitation or simulation, as of one disease for another. mi��met��icadj.1. Of or exhibiting mimicry.2. , first imitating anddoing impressions of the voices and people around him, and lateradapting particular patterns and characteristics from his readings tohis creative efforts. O'Connor and Lyly are only two figures amonga wide range of these influences, including his mother, the histrionic histrionic/his��tri��on��ic/ (his?tre-on��ik) excessively dramatic or emotional, as in histrionic personality disorder; see under personality. Thelma Toole, Boethius, Mark Twain, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift,Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Wildblood (the initial name for Ignatius J.Reilly), and even Batman, the comic book figure whose worldview Ignatius"rather admires." John Lyly, however, is an important butoverlooked writer whose work helped Toole make the transition from thecondemnation and condescension that mark his juvenile effort, The NeonBible, to the celebration and satire that memorialize me��mo��ri��al��ize?tr.v. me��mo��ri��al��ized, me��mo��ri��al��iz��ing, me��mo��ri��al��iz��es1. To provide a memorial for; commemorate.2. To present a memorial to; petition. A Confederacy ofDunces. My first remarks, then, concern Lyly as a major influence inToole's artistic development. My second, larger concern centers onthe concept of "influence" itself--whether influence as"anatomy" or as "anxiety"--and the relevance ofusing Toole as a figure who exemplifies readers' discussions ofartistic development. When readers consider the intertextualities andcross currents shared among A Confederacy of Dunces, New Orleansculture, and the literature of the American South at large, a minorElizabethan poet, playwright and early novelist is not exactly who comesto mind. So due to a curiosity about Toole's strange, flawed, buthilarious novel that has never waned, a few years ago I set out to seewhat I could make of this influence by paying a visit to what littlewritten documentation remains of his literary legacy. Toole's papers are housed in the Manuscripts Division of theHoward-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University. The holdings aredescribed as taking up a total of eighteen linear feet, comprised oftwenty-two manuscript boxes, two oversize boxes, and two oversizevolumes. His undergraduate thesis, submitted May 15, 1958, for a B. A.with honors, is among these papers. Titled "The Women inLyly's Plays: An Honors Essay," the document is thirty-sevenpages divided into three straightforward sections. If Toole had not beenso young when he described them, these headings might striketoday's readers as either too ambitious or quite broad: "TheBackground," "The Plays," and "The Conclusion"are Roman numerals one, two and three. Even the classical figures ofanaphora--repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successiveclauses--and asyndeton--the omission of conjunctions betweenclauses--that mark these sections, both of which create a tone of falseauthority and pretension on the title page, might strike readers asoverwrought, perhaps yet another early indication of a tendency towardrhetorical waxing that the young critic would later use for comiceffect. The more than twenty sources listed in the bibliography aredescribed as "Works Consulted" because all are not necessarilyworks cited. In fact, although the essay is generally persuasive, wellwritten and dutifully researched, Toole relies heavily on thescholarship of principally four of those sources: Muriel C.Bradbrook's The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy, AlbertFeuillerat's John Lyly, William Ringler's "The ImmediateSource of Euphuism," and Virgil K. Whitaker'sShakespeare's Use of Learning. In section one, Toole relies mostly on Bradbrook's literaryhistory for context. "In comedy," Toole explains, the native tradition of coarse humor was gradually diluted through the influence of the Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence and the more romantic Italian comedies by such writers as Ariosto. The Latin drama's most apparent contribution was the five-act structure. But these Latin comedies also offered a number of new and complex plots that contrasted sharply with the threadbare plots of the Moralities. (2) Upon the literary emergence of Lyly, Toole argues that "we seethe crystallization of the English comedy which had been spasmodically spas��mod��ic?adj.1. Relating to, affected by, or having the character of a spasm; convulsive.2. Happening intermittently; fitful: spasmodic rifle fire.3. developed by schoolmasters and students of language in academic anddidactic plays. We can hardly relate Lyly's work to the coarsehumor of the native Morality. His work is on a more refined level"(2-3). More than any other Elizabethan dramatist, Toole insists,Lyly's plays were "attuned to the social patterns, customs,and interests of the elite" (4). Toole's essential argument inthis section is a defense of Lyly's role as an important figure byoffering a three-fold response to readings that suggest Lyly was writingonly comedies of manners that resemble the courtesy book more than thefully formed dramatic work: one, Lyly wanted to amuse and entertain hisaudience, not to resort to what Toole refers to as "Senecanbloodiness"; two, Shakespeare borrowed from Lyly, at leastsatirically if not seriously; and three, before turning to drama, Lylywrote Euphues, which encouraged him to "reproduce the mood and paceof the novel in his drama" (2, 5). All are critical arguments thatmay have shaped Toole's budding creative principles: to amuse,especially through satire and parody of the didactic, and to emphasizedramatic structure, "mood," and "pace." Toole is careful in his thesis to credit Lyly's work withdeveloping a "novelistic nov��el��is��tic?adj.Of, relating to, or characteristic of novels.novel��is " structure that had been deficient inprevious dramatic writing. He continues by explicitly defining thetechnical elements of Lyly's Euphuistic style, working his waytoward the reasons that Euphuism eventually became a tool for comedy andsatire. Toole often refers to both Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)and its sequel, Euphues and His England (1580), in this section. Euphues held up to English men and women a mirror of their own society, written in the Italian manner of romances of polite society. Euphues was a change from the chivalric romance of dangers, heroic hardships, and maidenly misfortune and fidelity. Instead, Lyly dwelt upon love and love-making as the chief topic of conversation, the basis for social intercourse. (5) Toole then describes the Euphuistic style, suggests how Lylyprobably developed the technique, and enumerates reasons the style wasso fashionable for a time until Shakespeare and others--including Lylyhimself--began to satirize the form. Toole tells readers that artificialuse of antithesis, puns, alliteration alliteration(əlĭt'ərā`shən), the repetition of the same starting sound in several words of a sentence. Probably the most powerful rhythmic and thematic uses of alliteration are contained in Beowulf, , proverbs, and examples from"ancient history" are the principle characteristics ofEuphuism: "Euphuism employs rhetorical figures of sound and vocalornament based upon three schemata: isocolon (clauses equal in length),parison par´i`sonn. 1. (Glassworking) An intermediate stage or shape of a glass object which is produced in more than one stage. (similar in form and structure), and paramoion (similar insound). Paragraphs are built up by series of comparisons" (5-6).Lyly probably learned this style, Toole speculates, from John Rainolds,president of Corpus Christi College Corpus Christi College can refer to the following colleges: Corpus Christi College, Belfast in Belfast, Northern Ireland Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpus Christi College, Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) , Oxford, who was the most popularacademic lecturer of the Elizabethan age and whose rhetoric exhibits theconventions of Euphuism. Other early Euphuists, Toole informs readers,were George Pettie, Stephen Gosson, and Thomas Lodge. In the figures ofFalstaff and Polonius, both of whom can be seen as precursors of thebombastic Ignatius, Shakespeare used Euphuism satirically by havingthese alazons deliver their speeches in Lylyan prose. Love's LabourLost (circa 1595) is another play in which Shakespeare redirectsEuphuism for comic purposes. Before the style became a target forparody, however, Toole argues that Euphues was popular because it"fused the vulgar and the aesthetic" (7). He goes on to remarkthat fusing these opposite categories creates no small amount of ironyfor contemporary readers, especially if they know that as the society ofthe court lords and ladies Lords´ and La´diesn. 1. (Bot.) The European wake-robin (Arum maculatum), - those with purplish spadix the lords, and those with pale spadix the ladies. attempted Euphuistic speech, they"crawled with vermin and performed their natural functions likebarnyard fowl" (7). Toole underscores that Lyly's audience wasa "society of sharp contrasts": the "vermin" versusthe "resplendent" (7). Few readers, even those who only haveonly a cursory understanding of A Confederacy of Dunces, need to bereminded of the sharp contrast between Ignatius's purple prose andhis personal hygiene. A plausible connection is that Toole applied thisargument in his thesis to his fiction; he fused the "vulgar and theaesthetic" to create a character who speaks like a "courtlord" but behaves like a "barnyard animal." In sections two and three of the honors thesis, Toole reviews themajor women characters in Lyly's plays and tries to show that oneof Lyly's important contributions to the development of Englishliterature was creating women who were shrewd, sophisticated, andrhetorically elegant, especially "when we consider the rowdy andphysical buffoonery which passed for humor at this time" (34).Toole's ambition shows in his attempt to treat not two or threeplays but all eight of the dramatic works attributed to Lyly: Campaspe(1583), Sapho and Phao Sapho and Phao is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by John Lyly. One of Lyly's earliest dramas, it was likely the first that the playwright devoted to the allegorical idealization of Queen Elizabeth I that became the predominating feature of Lyly's dramatic (1583), Gallathea (1585), Endimion, MotherBombie, Midas (1589), Love's Metamorphosis, and The Woman in theMoone (1591). Section two is the longest of the three, but if the thesiswere not Toole's, of course, it would not merit attention. Readersmay find it interesting, however, that his treatment of the plays inthis section, although far too brief to qualify as sustained criticalanalysis, is as much a study of Lyly's artistic influences as it isa study of Lyly's women characters. Toole introduces each play byreviewing its influences. He tells readers that Campaspe was inspired bythe legend of Alexander, Gallathea was endebted to Ovid'sMetamorphosis, Endimion was based on Lucian's Deorum Dial II, andso on. In fact, the majority of this section discusses sources, whilethe analysis of the women seems secondary. In Mother Bombie, althoughthe character Mother Bombie plays only a tertiary role in the plot, theprincipal recourse of the more important characters is to have her telltheir fortunes. Readers know that Toole's creative adaptation ofBoethius' The Consolation of Philosophy Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: Consolatio Philosophiae) is a philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year AD 524. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West in Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, places Ignatius at thealtar of Fortuna's Spinning Wheel, which makes his description ofBombie as a fortune teller an interesting reference. Toole concludes histhird section by returning to the importance of language itself as ameans of establishing and reinforcing social, economic, and educationalstrata: "The emphasis upon conversation had created a correspondingemphasis upon the mechanical means of conversing: words, choice ofphrases, elegant and florid florid/flor��id/ (flor��id)1. in full bloom; occurring in fully developed form.2. having a bright red color.flor��idadj.Of a bright red or ruddy color. methods of expression. Euphuism, therefore,was the ideal verbal vehicle for conversation, and the Euphuistic ladiesof Lyly's dramas were particularly representative of theupper-class women of the age" (32). His mother had taught Toolethat "elegant" and "florid" speech was a means ofreinforcing social and educational strata, even in the face of bleakeconomic circumstances, and studying Lyly's "Euphuisticladies" seems to have further underscored for him that rhetoric canalter the way one is perceived. Watching Thelma Toole, who gaveelocution and dramatic speaking lessons to neighborhood children,including young Kenny, and whose sense of decorum was an affectation af��fec��ta��tion?n.1. A show, pretense, or display.2. a. Behavior that is assumed rather than natural; artificiality.b. A particular habit, as of speech or dress, adopted to give a false impression. even by midcentury standards in New Orleans, may have led toToole's early interest in Lyly and Euphuism. Morality, wit, grandiloquence gran��dil��o��quence?n.Pompous or bombastic speech or expression.[From grandiloquent, from Latin grandiloquus : grandis, great + , affectation, didacticism,genderbending, role-playing, ideal friendship, female worship andmisogyny in turns: all are Elizabethan concerns that Toole notes in histhesis, concerns that readers do not have to strain to see employed tosatirical, even absurd ends in A Confederacy of Dunces. Readers havelong recognized that Ignatius's speech, as much as his physicaldescription and concern for the corporeal body, is one of thecharacteristics that makes him so memorable. He is informed by theRabelaisian tradition, to be sure, but what has not been noted orexplored, however, is that Toole's early study of Lyly and Euphuismis probably a direct and important influence on the text, thoughcertainly one of many. No doubt aware of T. S. Eliot's quip thatbad poets borrow and good ones steal, the mature Toole in a sense wasimitating Shakespeare imitating Lyly. Consider the following threepassages by Lyly, Shakespeare, and Toole. The first is from Euphues; thecharacter Philautus is speaking. The second is Falstaff's parody ofLyly's style in Henry the Fourth, Part One when he imitatesHal's father. The third passage occurs when Ignatius is filling hisBig Chief tablet The Big Chief tablet was a popular writing notebook for several generations of young children in the United States. It featured widely spaced lines, easier to write in for those learning to write. with invective, part of his "lengthy indictmentagainst our century" (18). Waxing eloquent, Philautus muses over abasic irony of human experience: Alas, Euphues, by how much the more I love the high climbing of thycapacity, by so much the more I fear thy fall. The fine crystal issooner crazed than the hard marble, the greenest Beech burneth fasterthen the driest Oak, the fairest silk is soonest soiled, and thesweetest wine turneth to the sharpest vinegar, the pestilence pestilence/pes��ti��lence/ (pes��ti-lins) a virulent contagious epidemic or infectious epidemic disease.pestilen��tial pes��ti��lencen.1. doth mostrifest infect the clearest complection, and the Caterpiller cleavethunto the ripest fruit, the most delicate wit is allured with smallenticement unto vice, and most subject to yield unto vanity, iftherefore thou do but harken har��ken?v.Variant of hearken.Verb 1. harken - listen; used mostly in the imperativehark, hearkenlisten - hear with intention; "Listen to the sound of this cello" to the Sirens, thou wilt be enamoured enamouredor US enamoredAdjectiveenamoured ofa. in love withb. very fond of and impressed by: he is not enamoured of Moscow[Latin amor love] , ifthou haunt their houses and places, thou shalt be enchanted en��chant?tr.v. en��chant��ed, en��chant��ing, en��chants1. To cast a spell over; bewitch.2. To attract and delight; entrance. See Synonyms at charm. . (Lyly 189) In Lyly's passage, readers immediately recognize parallel andantithetical syntactic elements, elements that are often repetitive andhighly alliterative al��lit��er��a��tive?adj.Of, showing, or characterized by alliteration.al��liter��a : "by how much" and "by so much,""I love the high climbing...[but] I fear thy fall," "finecrystal" and "hard marble," "greenest Beech"and "driest Oak," "sweetest wine" and "sharpestvinegar," "burneth" and "turneth,""sooner" and "soonest," and "thou do ...thouwilt...thou shalt," to name a few. Compare Lyly's style to Shakespeare's brief imitation andlikely parody of the technique: "Harry, I do not only marvel wherethou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied. For thoughthe camomile camomile:see chamomile. , the more it is trodden trod��den?v.A past participle of tread.troddenVerba past participle of tread on, the faster it grows, so youth,the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears" (II.iv. 403-7). Hereagain readers detect Lyly's Euphuistic style: "wherethou" and "how thou," the "trodden" camomileand "wasted" youth, "faster" and "sooner,""wasted" and "wears." Now consider both of thesepassages to Toole's outright burlesque burlesque(bûrlĕsk`)[Ital.,=mockery], form of entertainment differing from comedy or farce in that it achieves its effects through caricature, ridicule, and distortion. It differs from satire in that it is devoid of any ethical element. of the form that he becameso familiar with during his study of John Lyly: After a period in which the western world had enjoyed order, tranquility, unity, and oneness with its True God and Trinity, there appeared winds of change which spelled evil days ahead. An ill wind blows no one good. The luminous years of Abelard, Thomas a Becket, and Everyman dimmed into dross; Fortuna's wheel had turned on humanity, crushing its collarbone, smashing its skull, twisting its torso, puncturing its pelvis, sorrowing its soul. Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale. (40) "After a period in which" and "there appearedwinds," "western world" and "True...Trinity,"and "so high" and "so low" are among thealliterative and antithetical patterns here; similar examples include atwisting torso, the puncturing of a pelvis, and a sorrowing soul. Citingauthority, such as in the case of the "luminous years of," isanother aspect of Euphuism, as is the final word-play: "once ...dedicated to the soul ... now dedicated to the sale." My hope isthat readers will recognize the Lylyan technique in these passages andagree that Toole put it to use in A Confederacy of Dunces. Recognizing Lyly's Euphuistic style as an importantcontribution to Toole's artistic development constitutes only thefirst of my two approaches to the larger topic of "influence"in his fiction. Although I offer these three extracts so readers can seetheir stylistic similarities, I do not intend to give a close orextended comparative reading of passages from Lyly, Shakespeare, andToole, nor do I contend that such an extended study is necessary. Thepurple passage from Toole is a good example of his use of the mostcommon figures of Euphuism: antithesis, parallelism, alliteration,repetition, consonance con��so��nance?n.1. Agreement; harmony; accord.2. a. Close correspondence of sounds.b. The repetition of consonants or of a consonant pattern, especially at the ends of words, as in blank , assonance assonance:see rhyme. , puns and word-play, anecdotes, andallusions to historical figures. The pattern can be seen throughoutIgnatius's journal, especially, but also in his encounters withother characters. The prevalence of Euphuism in Ignatius's absurdly titled"Journal of a Working Boy" is perhaps understandable: LikeEuphues himself, Ignatius believes he has undertaken a journey ofmaturation and discovery, albeit the latter journey is one that readersknow lampoons the conventions of the picaresque pic��a��resque?adj.1. Of or involving clever rogues or adventurers.2. Of or relating to a genre of usually satiric prose fiction originating in Spain and depicting in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish and the bildungsroman bildungsroman(German; “novel of character development”)Class of novel derived from German literature that deals with the formative years of the main character, whose moral and psychological development is depicted. .Euphues, a character whose very name essentially means "wellendowed," explores through his encounters with those he meets thelimitations of pure intellect considered outside the context of wisdom,experience, and proper socialization socialization/so��cial��iza��tion/ (so?shal-i-za��shun) the process by which society integrates the individual and the individual learns to behave in socially acceptable ways. so��cial��i��za��tionn. . Again, Toole seems to have turnedthe narrative of moral edification ed��i��fi��ca��tion?n.Intellectual, moral, or spiritual improvement; enlightenment.Noun 1. edification - uplifting enlightenmentsophistication on its head. Through Euphues'sencounters with sharply contrasting perspectives concerning the natureof existence, all of which he rhetorically underscores by using theEuphuistic style of balancing opposites, Euphues in turn makes wisechoices and poor ones. The difference is that while Euphues'snarrative considers the merits and follies of many viewpoints--analready well-established tradition later developed more fully in workssuch as Voltaire's Candide and Johnson's Rasselas--Toolereduces Ignatius's morality, sense of history, view of education,and concomitantly his speech to outright bathos ba��thos?n.1. a. An abrupt, unintended transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect.b. An anticlimax.2. a. . Euphues is open todebate and revision, but Ignatius made up his mind long ago anddismissed contemporary society in the process. The postscript to thesecond edition of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit is also interestingbecause it suggests that the sequel, Euphues and His England, wouldoffer a critique of the universities. Few readers could forget scenessuch as Ignatius's dumping stacks of ungraded term papers throughhis office window on the heads of protesting students, the image of theincredulous Ignatius and the combative Myrna Minkoff as students in agraduate seminar, or the description of the incompetent,"cocktail-quaffing" Professor Talc talc,mineral ranging in color from white through various shades of gray and green to the red and brown of impure specimens, translucent to opaque, and having a greasy, soapy feel. . The issue of educationgone awry has been identified and explored, in fact, by William BedfordClark. Perhaps yet another way of thinking about Toole's inversionsof the serious and the satiric is that in A Confederacy of Dunces, thecautionary tale of the Prodigal Son becomes not the story of ason's resentment of his father's demands, which lead to hardlessons in the big city followed by return and reform, but ratherbecomes the story of a son's indolence, arrogance, and ingratitude IngratitudeAnastasie and Delphineungrateful daughters do not attend father’s funeral. [Fr. Lit.: Père Goriot]Glencoe, Massacre ,which lead to a last-ditch escape to New York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. with little hope foreither return or reform. Lyly aimed at writing prose with both great precision and delicacyas well as with great erudition and display of remote knowledge andclassical learning. After Lyly wrote his moralistic prose romanceEuphues: The Anatomy of Wit, often considered the first English novel,the style was quite in vogue, but only for a brief period. Audiences andwriters quickly learned that such a bombastic and artificially elevatedstyle, although originally intended to display academic erudition, wasan easy target for satire and parody. Shakespeare recognized this andassociated the style with the egos and false bravado of characters suchas Falstaff and Polonius. Toole's alazon, of course, becomesIgnatius. Toole's eiron, on the other hand, may have been the youngDavid in The Neon Bible, a soft-spoken character who, like Hamlet, knowsmore than he reveals. At this point I would like to turn to the issue ofinfluence itself, suggesting along the way a few reasons whyToole's fiction is an excellent source for discussing ideas aboutcreative development and intertextuality Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. at large. The Neon Bible is areasonable place to begin such a discussion. Written at age sixteen and submitted to a literary contest which helost, The Neon Bible was Toole's first sustained creative effort.Due to feuding families and legal imbroglios long after Toole'sdeath in 1969, the short novel did not see print until 1989, althoughthe young Toole composed the narrative in 1953, a full ten years beforehe tells his parents in a letter from Puerto Rico that he has finishedthe first three chapters of a promising new story. Most general readerswho know A Confederacy of Dunces, however, probably have not read TheNeon Bible. Many of those who have read the earlier narrative werelikely disappointed if they were expecting something akin toToole's more celebrated novel. The manuscript's odd journey topublication has been explained by both Kenneth Holditch and Pat Carr;because of its tangled history, the knowledge that it was written atsixteen, and the long critical and popular shadows still being cast by AConfederacy of Dunces, very little extended analysis of the earlierstory has made it to print. The story itself is a first-person narration of the deprivedchildhood of a Mississippi boy named David. The garish neon biblevisible atop his small town's Baptist church is a continualreminder of the religious totalitarianism and social hypocrisy thatDavid first does not understand but that eventually cause him to becomea murderous fugitive. The events of the plot span approximately twelveyears, from the time David is four during the early forties until he issixteen during the fifties, a period roughly analogous to Toole'sown childhood and adolescence. The in medias res [Latin, Into the heart of the subject, without preface or introduction.] ten-chapter narrativeis driven principally by his advancement through primary school gradesone through eight. The three teachers who run David's schoolhouseare a puritanical zealot, an incompetent spinster, and a promiscuoushomosexual. Given the 1950s Southern American and Catholic milieu duringwhich Toole submitted The Neon Bible for his school's literarycontest, not to mention the unflattering and stereotypical light inwhich these teachers and the educational system is cast, perhaps it isnot surprising that the story was rejected by its judges. The storyleads to a contrived and sensationalistic sen��sa��tion��al��ism?n.1. a. The use of sensational matter or methods, especially in writing, journalism, or politics.b. Sensational subject matter.c. Interest in or the effect of such subject matter. ending that aspires to themore skillful development of the form by Flannery O'Connor, a formwhich readers now commonly refer to as Southern gothic or grotesque.After graduating from school, David takes a job as an errand boy,watches his mother continue to deteriorate physically andpsychologically, and becomes distraught when his Aunt Mae, who has beencaring for his mother, capriciously decides to leave for Nashville andso pass the growing burden of her sister's care to the young David.In the final chapters, David comes home one evening to find his mothernear death after losing large quantities of blood from an apparentaccident. The next morning the preacher, unaware of this accident fromwhich she has died, arrives with plans to take her to the state asylum.When the preacher refuses to heed his admonitions to stay away, Davidraises and fires his father's rifle, killing the preacher instantlyfrom behind. Through the young David, the equally young Toole was trying hishand at exposing hypocrisy in a few of the many forms it commonly takes:religious bigotry, intellectual narrowness, social intolerance,egocentrism, ethnocentrism ethnocentrism,the feeling that one's group has a mode of living, values, and patterns of adaptation that are superior to those of other groups. It is coupled with a generalized contempt for members of other groups. , xenophobia XenophobiaBoxer RebellionChinese rising aimed at ousting foreign interlopers (1900). [Chinese Hist. , sexual deceit, physicalaggression, and family dysfunction. Unlike O'Connor, however, Tooledoes not seem interested in recognizing the operation of grace in anotherwise tragic and violent world. Yet passages in The Neon Bible arestrangely similar to O'Connor's later fiction. ConsiderDavid's awakening to the world of adult hypocrisy as he reacts tohearing the town gossip over his mother's deteriorating mentalhealth: But I knew the way the people in town thought about things. Theyalways had some time left over from their life to bother about otherpeople and what they did. They thought they had to get together to helpother people out, like the time they got together about the woman wholet a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her wasup north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got theveterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody intown, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike.The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. Ifsomebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybodyhad to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn'thate it. (NB 138) Toole also tried his hand at imitating the kind of violence andgore that had found a home in some O'Connor stories as well. WhenDavid finds his mother bleeding, he remembers that "I put my handover her mouth to try and stop more [blood] from coming out, but after Itook my hand away for a while, all that I had been holding in poured outall at once and made a little wave down the side of her face and neckand made the border of the pool on the floor get wider" (NB 152).Although O'Connor published "The Geranium geranium,common name for some members of the Geraniaceae, a family of herbs and small shrubs of temperate and subtropical regions. Their long, beak-shaped fruits give them the popular names crane's-bill (for species of the genus Geranium, ," her firstshort story, in 1946, and several others through the late forties andearly fifties, Wise Blood was not available until its publication in1952, one year before Toole composed The Neon Bible. Such a timelinemakes it plausible that Toole was aware of O'Connor'semergence before the later and more celebrated appearance of her 1955 AGoodMan Is Hard To Find and Other Stones. J. D. Salinger's TheCatcher in the Rye (1951) and even George Orwell's 1984 are otherpossible influences. Like The Neon Bible, these texts question authorityand the legitimacy of various institutions. Thus while David'sexposure of hypocrisy could have been inspired by early O'Connorpublications, there can be far less doubt that subsequent O'Connorstories such as "Everything That Rises Must Converge Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of short stories written by Flannery O'Connor during her final illness. The title of the collection and of the short story is taken from a passage from the work of the Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. " or"The Enduring Chill"--both of which contain lazy, pretentioussons who think of themselves as writers--influenced Toole's morefamous novel. O'Connor's mastery of the form is in part due toher realization that bigotry, hypocrisy, and zealotry zeal��ot��ry?n.Excessive zeal; fanaticism.zealotism, zealotrya tendency to undue or excessive zeal; fanaticism.See also: BehaviorNoun 1. are bestillustrated through the eyes of bigots, hypocrites, and zealots Zealots(zĕl`əts), Jewish faction traced back to the revolt of the Maccabees (2d cent. B.C.). The name was first recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus as a designation for the Jewish resistance fighters of the war of A.D. 66–73. ,precisely the strategy that the younger Toole fails to employ in TheNeon Bible but the one the more experienced writer perfects in AConfederacy of Dunces. Discarding the hero for the antihero, Ignatiuswould come to play Hyde to David's Jekyll. All of this is to say that although Toole experimented in his earlynovel with the conventions of grotesque as a narrative strategy forexposing hypocrisy, the more mature Toole abandoned this strategy infavor of satire and other forms of humor. Trading the tragic vision forthe comic universe, the backwater town for the bacchanalian city, theinnocent narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. for the experienced one, Toole perhaps learned, thanksin part to his more intensive exposure as an undergraduate and graduatestudent to Elizabethan and Augustan writers, that satire and outrightburlesque were better suited to his literary talents and goals. Amongthese writers studied by the collegiate Toole was John Lyly, whoseEuphuistic style Toole superimposed on Ignatius J. Reilly to complementhis outlandish appearance and eccentric philosophy. Rather thanbombastic and hyperbolic hy��per��bol��ic? also hy��per��bol��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or employing hyperbole.2. Mathematicsa. Of, relating to, or having the form of a hyperbola.b. , David's narration is deadpan andunderstated, even in the face of childish cruelty, real violence, andscarring tragedy. Although Ignatius's voice is, after all, his own,and should not be denied its originality, the voice nevertheless echoesa long history of academic erudition taken to rhetorical excess and,ultimately, literary parody. In that voice and text readers may hearEuphues but they of course hear other competing and often contradictoryvoices. These other voices, or influences, considered together arethemselves characteristic of Euphuism's tendency toward allusion,authority, and anecdote which further suggest that A Confederacy ofDunces is at the same time a novel of "influences" and indeedone about the process of influence and artistic development itself. In his famous study The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom putsforth a theory of poetry--of "how to read"--that was in part apowerful counter-response to the critical fallout of what was originallyknown as the New Criticism introduced by Robert Penn Warren Noun 1. Robert Penn Warren - United States writer and poet (1905-1989)Warren and CleanthBrooks in texts such as Understanding Poetry (1938) and its companion,Understanding Fiction (1943). As I understand it, New Criticism at itsbest never suggested that a literary text should be read hermetically asan independent creation but rather that it simply required deliberateand intensive study. Yet as it found favor in colleges and universities,this new method of reading often became erroneously equated withstudying literature stripped of its various contexts. As readers know,Bloom's "corrective" argument is that "criticism isthe art of knowing the hidden roads that go from poem to poem"(96). More specifically, Bloom believes that all subsequent poems aremisinterpretations of previous poems, poems which represent thepoet's anxiety rather than overcoming that anxiety: Poetic Influence--when it involves two strong, authentic poets,--always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence ... is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, or perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist. (30) "Misprision The failure to perform a public duty.Misprision is a versatile word that can denote a number of offenses. It can refer to the improper performance of an official duty. " is the name Bloom gives this poeticmisreading. He defines six "revisionary ratios" or stages of apoet's life, each of which marks a strategy for responding to thework of a previous strong poet. I am not contending that Toole should beread against each of Bloom's six schemata, but if readers concedethat Bloom's study is relevant not only to poetry but to allcreative writing, then surely Toole's two novels provide studentsand critics with ample evidence that his creative development was aprocess of negotiation with his extensive reading and life as a studentof literature, as a teacher, as a creative writer, and as a critic andscholar. A common notion concerning A Confederacy of Dunces is that no oneknows quite what to make of the text or subsequently how to evaluate it,as Jefferson Humphries and John Lowe have remarked: "And still thedebate rages on about John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces;can such a popular, wildly funny book really be any good?" (6).Several basic issues have made full-fledged critical acceptance of thenovel problematic: the age-old tension of "literature" versuscommercially successful writing; the sadness that other thanToole's juvenile effort, A Confederacy of Dunces is the only novelhe left behind for consideration; the fact that, despite a recentlypublished attempt to write his life, still so little can be documentedabout it; and the sense that the novel seems so out of place, sodifferent from almost everything else that was produced during the yearsit was written. Yet discussing the novel as a dialectic of"anxieties" and influences--creative, critical, andcultural--can be a productive approach to a text that otherwisecontinues to resist critical placement. Criticism of A Confederacy of Dunces demonstrates that itsextensive literary influences include adaptations--whether serious orsatiric--of everything from John Lyly's development of Euphuism toFlannery O'Connor's use of the grotesque to WalkerPercy's interest in moviegoing, among many others. Because I am nowtrying to suggest the merit of approaching Toole's fiction byexploring Bloom's "hidden roads that go from poem topoem," I will resist the temptation to summarize previous criticismor recount the surprising number and diversity of specific referencesthat Toole makes to Medieval philosophy, literary figures, popularculture, and local geography, but apparent influences from Toole'slife are as interesting as the extensive intertextual in��ter��tex��tu��al?adj.Relating to or deriving meaning from the interdependent ways in which texts stand in relation to each other.in ones. Even morefascinating is that so many readers of this novel seem to find theconnections between memory and creativity appealing. The story hasalways tempted readers to consider--perhaps to a fault--the extent towhich Toole's life was aligned with his fiction, which was the casewith Rene Pol Nevils and Deborah Hardy in Ignatius Rasing, their attemptto piece together a biography of Toole largely based on anecdotes,interviews, and a handful of letters. Nevils and Hardy often speculateabout some of the experiences that may have found their way into AConfederacy. For example, they write that one of the teachers atToole's high school was named Miss Fortunata Collins and that alocal ice cream parlor Ice cream parlors are places that sell ice cream and frozen yogurt to consumers. Ice cream is normally sold in two varieties in these stores: soft-serve ice cream (normally with just chocolate, vanilla, and "twist", a mix of the two), and hard-packed, which has an assortment of he frequented was called the Spinning Wheel(36-37). During his days at Tulane, Nevils and Hardy relate, Toolebecame friends with Don Stevens, whose blues band played in the FrenchQuarter. Stevens pushed a hot tamale cart around the city to make endsmeet, a duty they say Toole often performed for him when Stevens wasaway. They also tell readers that the summer after his graduation fromTulane, Toole worked in the office of Haspel Brothers, Inc., a localfamily business making men's clothing (48-49). Fortuna's Spinning Wheel, Ignatius's infamous Lucky Dogcart, and the Levy Pants Factory's "working conditions"are among some of the many unforgettable scenes and images in the novel,regardless of whether readers accept or dismiss that these biographicalreferences influenced his novel. Yet a few of the letters Nevils andHardy reproduce are nevertheless interesting in light of a discussionabout literary influence, creative "inspiration," andautobiographical theory, or life-writing. In a long, desperate letterdated March 5, 1965, and addressed to Robert Gottlieb, Toole considersthis very question: "The book is not autobiography; neither is italtogether an invention. While the plot is manipulation andjuxtaposition of characters, with one or two exceptions the people andplaces in the book are drawn from observation and experience. I am notin the book; I've never pretended to be. But I am writing aboutthings that I know, and in recounting these, it's difficult not tofeel them" (138). Toole's uncertainty on this question,however, is betrayed by other remarks in the letter: "In short,little of the book is invented; the plot certainly is. It's truethat ... this book became more real to me than what was happening aroundme: I was beginning to talk and act like Ignatius. No doubt this is whythere is so much of him and why his verbosity VerbosityClarissa Harlowelongest novel in the English language, total-ling one million words. [Br. Lit.: Benét, 203]Mahabharataepic poem of Ancient India runs to some 200,000 verses. [Hindu Lit. becomes tiring. It'sreally not his verbosity but mine" (139). James Olney'sextensive work on autobiographical theory is helpful here in enrichingour understanding of A Confederacy of Dunces as both a narrative of andabout influence. In a study comparing St. Augustine, Rousseau, and Beckett, Olneytells readers that Augustine's use of the metaphor of weaving as ananalogue for both memory and narrative is a productive way to thinkabout literary imagination and creativity: "In any case it iseasier to see memory and narrative as symbiotic symbiotic/sym��bi��ot��ic/ (sim?bi-ot��ik) associated in symbiosis; living together. sym��bi��ot��icadj.Of, resembling, or relating to symbiosis. activities if we thinkof them both as akin to weaving; in so thinking we also lay the groundfor an ongoing hermeneutic her��me��neu��tic? also her��me��neu��ti��caladj.Interpretive; explanatory.[Greek herm procedure that would be the counterpart ofthe process of weaving" (419). Olney further explains: "Thejustification for bringing interpretive practice together with theoperation of memory and the making of narrative lies in the Latincontexo, 'to weave together,' which permits us to speak of atext of memory and a text of narrative, both woven forms amenable tointerpretive unraveling and re-raveling in the pursuit of meaning. Togrant the weaving/text metaphor its full weight we must conceive of it,for any author, in terms not of an isolated passage or single volume butof the entire body of work, which we may call, in keeping with suchphrases as 'a lifetime' and 'the course of a life,'a lifework life��work?n.The chief or entire work of a person's lifetime.Noun 1. lifework - the principal work of your careercalling, career, vocation - the particular occupation for which you are trained " (419). Recall that Toole writes to Gottlieb that his"book is not autobiography; neither is it altogether aninvention" (italics added). Bloom and Olney may help readersfurther understand the theoretical underpinnings of both literaryinfluence and the transformative relationship between one's lifeand fiction. Olney in fact underscores Bloom's principal argumentthat a poem can only be understood in terms of its poetic influences: St. Augustine's flail significance in the tradition [of autobiography] will only be understood if read in the light of Rousseau and Beckett, Rousseau's only if read in the fight of Augustine and Beckett, Beckett's only if read in the light of Augustine and Rousseau. This is the kind of hermeneutic generosity, weaving back and forth and in and out among texts at every conceivable level, demanded by the tradition of life-writing emergent in the Western world over sixteen centuries. (420) Olney's order is a tall one, going well beyond my presentconcern, but "reading" Toole's life, his thesis, and histwo published novels in light of Olney's and Bloom's workreveals interesting patterns. Although A Confederacy of Dunces and TheNeon Bible are not autobiographies, they are nevertheless narrativesthat demand the kind of "willful revisionism re��vi��sion��ism?n.1. Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements.2. ,""hermeneutic generosity," and "weaving back and forth andin and out among texts" proposed by Bloom and Olney. Readers cansee this process of weaving culminate in the figure of Ignatius J.Reilly, a composite of influences from Toole's life and readingsthat include Toole's mother, his colleague Robert Byrne (amedievalist me��di��e��val��istalso me��di��ae��val��ist ?n.1. A specialist in the study of the Middle Ages.2. A connoisseur of medieval culture.medievalist1. who was one of Toole's colleagues at the University ofLouisiana at Lafayette The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette,[1] is a coeducational public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana. ), entire literary traditions of satire,grotesque, and rhetorically elevated displays of erudition, and ofcourse aspects of the writer himself, as Toole admits in hiscorrespondence. Other, less-recognized influences pervade the text as well. Forexample, Toole's original name for Ignatius was Humphrey Wildblood.In that name readers find yet another thread that Toole used to"weave" Ignatius. During the approximate time that I readToole's thesis, I was contacted by a German film translator livingin Berlin about my knowledge of the surname Wildblood after he cameacross it on one of my web pages while he was conducting genealogicalsearches for his ancestors. The web page was a syllabus for a graduateseminar on the literature of Louisiana in which the name "HumphreyWildblood" appeared. Knowing that some of the Shropshire Wildbloodshad established themselves in southeast Louisiana during the nineteenthcentury and eventually migrated west to Lafayette, he believed I mightknow something more of his Louisiana Wildbloods. I had little to offerhim other than an explanation of why I listed the name, but over acorrespondence of several emails, he made some interesting remarksconcerning his name's history. Among these were that the nameWildblood appears in about a dozen twentieth-century novels whose maincharacters are usually degenerates, eccentrics, or those who generallyflout flout?v. flout��ed, flout��ing, floutsv.tr.To show contempt for; scorn: flout a law; behavior that flouted convention.See Usage Note at flaunt.v.intr. social mores. Also, Peter Wildeblood, the playwright, novelist,and foreign correspondent, was a leader among conservative gay circleswho campaigned for legal reform concerning sexuality. Like Oscar Wilde,the figure with whom he is often associated, Peter Wildeblood wasconvicted after a widely publicized trial and subsequently imprisonedfor allegedly inciting lewd behavior in England in 1954. In 1955 hepublished an autobiography based on this experience titled Against theLaw. Whether Toole would have been familiar with Peter Wildeblood'sautobiography or have even encountered the Wildblood name in Louisianais unknown, but there can be little doubt as to Toole's knowledgeof English literature, including Oscar Wilde's notorious ThePicture of Dorian Gray (1891). Blending decadent and gothic literarytraditions, Wilde's novel depicts the dissolute dis��so��lute?adj.Lacking moral restraint; indulging in sensual pleasures or vices.[Middle English, from Latin dissol lifestyle of ahedonistic aristocrat whose attempt to live a life of indulgence withoutconsequence leads to his fall, a structure repeated in A Confederacy ofDunces, although unlike Wilde's premise, it is Ignatius himself whophysically deteriorates and becomes increasingly grotesque, while hisinner image or "portrait" of himself remains unspoiled. Toolein fact gives one of his minor characters the name Dorian Greene, butGray's profligacy seems to apply at least as much to Ignatiushimself as to Greene. A comprehensive list of the novel's influences, even onewithout commentary or analysis, obviously cannot be provided in anydiscussion of a literary text. In fact, if readers accept Bloom'sargument about "misprision" and the endless "hidden roadsthat go from poem to poem" and likewise acknowledge Olney'ssuggestion that interpretation is an infinite process of "weavingback and forth and in and out among texts at every conceivablelevel" in "terms not of an isolated passage or single volumebut of the entire body of work," then this exploration might beconsidered just one more road, one more thread in a process of continual"unraveling and re-raveling." I began by exploring theinfluence that John Lyly's development of Euphuism had onToole's creation of Ignatius, suggesting that his satirical use ofthe Euphuistic style is yet another indication that Toole'sstrategy for exposing hypocrisy shifted from the rhetoricalunderstatement and grotesque conventions that structure The Neon Bibleto the hyperbole and comedy of A Confederacy of Dunces. A largersuggestion, however, is that these rich and presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. infiniteconnections remind us of a writer whose troubled life but successful--ifstill controversial--fiction can be approached as a fascinatinghermeneutic "weave." Laying bare such an "anatomy"of influence may serve to further encourage readers to consider eachtext in the light of the other, both in the light of Toole'stransformation of experience to art, and narrative at large in the fightof a postmodern world where construction, as the argument goes, replacesessence. I would like to thank the Special Collections division of theHoward-Triton Memorial Library at Tulane University for giving me accessto Toole's undergraduate thesis and permission to quote from theessay. I am especially thankful for the gracious assistance of Wilbur E.Meneray, Assistant Dean for Special Collections, and Leon C. 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Whitaker,Virgil K. Shakespeare's Use of Learning. San Marino, CA: HuntingtonLibrary, 1953. ROBERT RUDNICKI Louisiana Tech University Louisiana Tech University,at Ruston; coeducational; state supported; chartered 1894, opened 1895 as an industrial institute. It became Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in 1921 and attained university status in 1970.