Decoding the body : meaningful corpulence in "A Confederacy of Dunces"

  This thesis examines Confederacy through the theoretical lens of Stallybrass and White, who use Foucault’s ideas to interpret the meaning of fat in our society. The fat body is transgressive and the Other. In our bourgeois culture, “The dominant class's ability to emotionally separate and thus regulate the body ... becomes a sort of [cultural] capital ...” (4). Democracy is politically egalitarian, but it continues elitism encoded in manners, such as controlling consumption. She argues that Toole disrupts cultural constructions of the fat body. Ignatius comes from lower class, but he aspires to high culture. His fat body betrays his cultural origin and prevents his admission to high culture, while his educated mind in turn alienates him from the lower classes.

  While Gatewood makes many worthy observations of Confederacy and deserves to be read, her text is, like Ignatius, ambiguous. For example, she quotes Daigrepont's poorly thoughtout article (New Orleans Review, 1982) extensively and apparently favorably (e.g. 46); yet, she often pushes beyond his conclusions and then (correctly) refutes them (e.g. 48). Tison Pugh (Studies in Medievalism, 2006) covers some of the same territory (gender ambiguity and transgression), but Gatewood correctly puts these themes in the context of Carnival. She claims that Ignatius even transgresses the role of the transgressor by seeing the bourgeois as vulgar. She compares Ignatius to New Orleans itself (31). She discusses Ignatius’s relationship to fate, but she rejects Clark’s theory (Essays in Literature, 1987) that the novel points to God behind the seeming chaos of fortune (38). Basically, I think it is well done, though I personally agree with Clark.