Decoding the Body: Meaningful Corpulence in "A Confederacy of Dunces".

This text focuses on the primary character, Ignatius J. Reilly, in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. The discussion focuses on the meanings both inherent and implied in Ignatius's corpulent body. It attempts to understand the body as a manifestation of cultural capital as well as a site where capitalist ideology is inscribed and interpreted, and then to further complicate that understanding by placing the body in more diverse cultural contexts. The project looks at how Toole uses Reilly to disrupt cultural constructions of the fat body in terms of gender and sexuality, centering and marginalization, and spatial and social transgression, to ultimately define meanings traditionally assigned to fat as purely cultural products/tools not inherently contained within the fat body.