Teacher Guide

A Confederacy of Dunces Lesson Plan

Relationship to Other Books

The only other novel written by John Kennedy Toole is Neon Bible (1989), which was also published posthumously.

A biography of Toole's life, Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces by Cory MacLaughlin was published in 2013 by DaCapo Press. It is scheduled to be adapted to film in 2018, directed by David Dubus.

The source of the title, A Confederacy of Dunces, comes from “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting,” by Jonathan Swift.

Influences on Toole's writing include: Flannery O'Connor, Boethius, Chaucer, John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, Cervantes, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, the Romantic Poets, Mark...

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