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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. 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 in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.

The book's title refers to an epigram from Jonathan Swift's essay Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, overweight, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. He is an educated but slothful 30-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown neighborhood of early-1960s New Orleans who, in his quest for employment, has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters. Toole wrote the novel in 1963 during his last few months in Puerto Rico. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction.

Ignatius Jacques Reilly is an overweight and unemployed thirty-year-old with a degree in Medieval History who lives with his mother, Irene Reilly. He utterly loathes the world around him, which he feels has lost the values of geometry and theology. One afternoon, Reilly's mother drives him "downtown in the old Plymouth, and while she was at the doctor's seeing about her arthritis, Ignatius had bought some sheet music at Werlein's for his trumpet and a new string for his lute." While Reilly waits for his mother, Officer Angelo Mancuso approaches Reilly and demands that the latter produce identification. Affronted and outraged by Mancuso's unwarranted zeal and officious manner, Reilly protests his innocence to the crowd while denouncing the city's vices and the graft of the local police. An elderly man, Claude Robichaux, takes Reilly's side, denouncing Officer Mancuso and the police as communists. In the resulting uproar, Reilly and his embarrassed mother escape, taking refuge in a bar in case Officer Mancuso is still in hot pursuit.

In the bar, Mrs. Reilly then drinks too much. As a result, she crashes her car. The fallout for the accident totals $1020, a sizable amount of money in early 1960s New Orleans. Ignatius is forced to work for the first time in many years in order to help his mother pay for the accident.

What follows is a series of adventures that introduce an assorted cast of characters and their interactions with each other due to, or with, Ignatius as he moves from low wage job to job. Throughout the novel, Ignatius obsesses over his wardrobe, verbally abuses his mother, and frequents movie theaters only to yell and condemn the actors and actresses on screen. The novel explores the psyche of a man who is debilitated every time he is stressed out due to a rare stomach condition and an adversarial relationship possibly disguised as flirtation with the politically liberal advocate Myrna Minkoff, his only friend from college.

Ignatius Jacques Reilly is something of a modern Don Quixote-eccentric, idealistic, and creative, sometimes to the point of delusion. In his foreword to the book, Walker Percy describes Ignatius as a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one". He disdains modernity, particularly pop culture. The disdain becomes his obsession: he goes to movies in order to mock their perversity and express his outrage with the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry". He prefers the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, and the Early Medieval philosopher Boethius in particular. However, he also enjoys many modern comforts and conveniences and is given to claiming that the rednecks of rural Louisiana hate all modern technology, which they associate with unwanted change. The workings of his pyloric valve play an important role in his life, reacting strongly to incidents in a fashion that he likens to Cassandra in terms of prophetic significance.

Ignatius is of the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to the goddess Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of fortune. Ignatius loves to eat, and his masturbatory fantasies lead in strange directions. His mockery of obscene images is portrayed as a defensive posture to hide their titillating effect on him. Although considering himself to have an expansive and learned worldview, Ignatius has an aversion to ever leaving the town of his birth, and frequently bores friends and strangers with the story of his sole, abortive journey out of New Orleans, a trip to Baton Rouge on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, which Ignatius recounts as a traumatic ordeal of extreme horror.

Myrna Minkoff, referred to by Ignatius as "that minx," is a Jewish beatnik from New York City, whom Ignatius met while she was in college in New Orleans. Though their political, social, religious, and personal orientations could hardly be more different, Myrna and Ignatius fascinate one another. The novel repeatedly refers to Myrna and Ignatius having engaged in tag-team attacks on the teachings of their college professors. For most of the novel, she is seen only in the regular correspondence which the two sustain since her return to New York, a correspondence heavily weighted with sexual analysis on the part of Myrna and contempt for her apparent sacrilegious activity by Ignatius. Officially, they both deplore everything the other stands for. Though neither of them will admit it, their correspondence indicates that, separated though they are by half a continent, many of their actions are meant to impress one another.

Mrs. Irene Reilly is the mother of Ignatius. She has been widowed for 21 years. At first, she allows Ignatius his space and drives him where he needs to go, but over the course of the novel she learns to stand up for herself. She also has a drinking problem, most frequently indulging in muscatel, although Ignatius exaggerates that she is a raving, abusive drunk.

She falls for Claude Robichaux, a fairly well-off man with a railroad pension and rental properties. At the end of the novel, she decides she will marry Claude. But first, she agrees with Santa Battaglia (who has not only recently become Mrs. Reilly's new best friend, but also harbors an intense dislike for Ignatius) that Ignatius is insane and arranges to have him sent to a mental hospital.

Santa Battaglia, a "grammaw" who is friends with Mrs. Reilly and has a marked disdain for Ignatius

Claude Robichaux, an old man constantly on the lookout for any "communiss" who might infiltrate the United States; he takes an interest in protecting Irene

Angelo Mancuso, an inept police officer, the nephew of Santa Battaglia, who, after an abortive attempt to arrest Ignatius as a "suspicious character," features prominently in the novel as Ignatius's self-perceived nemesis

Lana Lee, a pornographic model who runs the "Night of Joy", a downscale French Quarter strip club

George, Lana's distributor, who sells photographs of her to high-school children

Darlene, a goodhearted but none-too-bright girl, who aspires to be a "Night of Joy" stripper, with a pet cockatoo

Burma Jones, a black janitor for the "Night of Joy" who holds on to his below-minimum wage job only to avoid being arrested for vagrancy

Mr. Clyde, the frustrated owner of Paradise Vendors, a hot dog vendor business, who inadvisedly employs Ignatius as a vendor

Gus Levy, the reluctant, mostly absentee owner of Levy Pants, an inherited family business in the Bywater neighborhood where Ignatius briefly works

Mrs. Levy, Gus's wife, who attempts to psychoanalyze her husband and Miss Trixie despite being completely unqualified to do so

Miss Trixie, an aged clerk at Levy Pants who suffers from dementia and compulsive hoarding

Mr. Gonzalez, the meek office manager at Levy Pants

Dorian Greene, a flamboyant French Quarter homosexual who puts on elaborate parties

Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele, a trio of aggressive lesbians who run afoul of Ignatius

Dr. Talc, a mediocre professor at Tulane who had the misfortune of teaching Myrna and Ignatius

Miss Annie, the disgruntled neighbor of the Reillys who professes an addiction to headache medicine

Toole provides comical descriptions of two of the films Ignatius watches without naming them; they can be recognized as Billy Rose's Jumbo and That Touch of Mink, both Doris Day features released in 1962. In another passage, Ignatius declines to see another film, a "widely praised Swedish drama about a man who was losing his soul". This is most likely Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, released in early 1963. In another passage, Irene Reilly recalls the night Ignatius was conceived: after she and her husband viewed , released in October 1932.

Confederacy and New Orleans

Canal Street, New Orleans in the late 1950s; the D. H. Holmes store at right

A "Lucky Dogs" cart from the era of the novel

The book is famous for its rich depiction of New Orleans and the city's dialects, including Yat. Many locals and writers think that it is the best and most accurate depiction of the city in a work of fiction.

A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly can be found under the clock on the down-river side of the 800 block of Canal Street, New Orleans, the former site of the D. H. Holmes Department Store, now the Hyatt French Quarter Hotel. The statue mimics the opening scene: Ignatius waits for his mother under the D.H. Holmes clock, clutching a Werlein's shopping bag, dressed in a hunting cap, flannel shirt, baggy pants and scarf, 'studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste.' The statue is modeled on New Orleans actor John "Spud" McConnell, who portrayed Ignatius in a stage version of the novel.

Various local businesses are mentioned in addition to D. H. Holmes, including Werlein's Music Store and local cinemas such as the Prytania Theater. Some readers from elsewhere assume Ignatius's favorite soft drink, Dr. Nut, to be fictitious, but it was an actual local soft drink brand of the era. The "Paradise Hot Dogs" vending carts are an easily recognized satire of those actually branded "Lucky Dogs".

The structure of A Confederacy of Dunces reflects the structure of Ignatius's favorite book, Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy. Like Boethius' book, A Confederacy of Dunces is divided into chapters that are further divided into a varying number of subchapters. Key parts of some chapters are outside of the main narrative. In Consolation, sections of narrative prose alternate with metrical verse. In Confederacy, such narrative interludes vary more widely in form and include light verse, journal entries by Ignatius, and also letters between himself and Myrna. A copy of The Consolation of Philosophy within the narrative itself also becomes an explicit plot device in several ways.

As outlined in the introduction to a later revised edition, the book would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following Toole's 1969 death at 31. She was persistent and tried several different publishers, to no avail.

Thelma repeatedly called Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, to demand for him to read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:

...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained-that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading. In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.

The book was published by LSU Press in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. In 2005, Blackstone Audio released an unabridged audiobook of the novel, read by Barrett Whitener.

While Tulane University in New Orleans retains a collection of Toole's papers, and some early drafts have been found, the location of the original manuscript is unknown.

In March 1984, LSU staged a musical adaptation of the book, with book and lyrics by Frank Galati and music by Edward Zelnis; actor Scott Harlan played Ignatius.

Kerry Shale read the book for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in 1982, and later adapted the book into a one-man show which he performed at the Adelaide Festival in 1990, at the Gate Theatre in London, and for BBC Radio.

There have been repeated attempts to turn the book into a film. In 1982, Harold Ramis was to write and direct an adaptation, starring John Belushi as Ignatius and Richard Pryor as Burma Jones, but Belushi's death prevented this. Later, John Candy and Chris Farley were touted for the lead, but both of them, like Belushi, also died at an early age, leading many to ascribe a curse to the role of Ignatius.

Director John Waters was interested in directing an adaptation that would have starred Divine, who also died at an early age, as Ignatius.

British performer and writer Stephen Fry was at one point commissioned to adapt Toole's book for the screen. He was sent to New Orleans by Paramount Studios in 1997 to get background for a screenplay adaptation.

John Goodman, a longtime resident of New Orleans, was slated to play Ignatius at one point.

A version adapted by Steven Soderbergh and Scott Kramer, and slated to be directed by David Gordon Green, was scheduled for release in 2005. The film was to star Will Ferrell as Ignatius and Lily Tomlin as Irene. A staged reading of the script took place at the 8th Nantucket Film Festival, with Ferrell as Ignatius, Anne Meara as Irene, Paul Rudd as Officer Mancuso, Kristen Johnston as Lana Lee, Mos Def as Burma Jones, Rosie Perez as Darlene, Olympia Dukakis as Santa Battaglia and Miss Trixie, Natasha Lyonne as Myrna, Alan Cumming as Dorian Greene, John Shea as Gonzales, Jesse Eisenberg as George, John Conlon as Claude Robichaux, Jace Alexander as Bartender Ben, Celia Weston as Miss Annie, Miss Inez & Mrs. Levy, and Dan Hedaya as Mr. Levy.

Various reasons are cited as to why the Soderbergh version has yet to be filmed. They include disorganization and lack of interest at Paramount Pictures, Helen Hill the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission being murdered, and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. When asked why the film was never made, Will Ferrell has said it is a "mystery".

In 2012, there was a version in negotiation with director James Bobin and potentially starring Zach Galifianakis.

In a 2013 interview, Steven Soderbergh remarked "I think it's cursed. I'm not prone to superstition, but that project has got bad mojo on it."

In November 2015, Huntington Theatre Company introduced a stage version of A Confederacy of Dunces written by Jeffrey Hatcher in their Avenue of the Arts/BU Theatre location in Boston, starring Nick Offerman as Ignatius J. Reilly. It set a record as the company's highest-grossing production.

On November 5, 2019, the included A Confederacy of Dunces on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels. Confederacy of Dunces is included on a list of 'most funny' or 'best comedic novel'.

Clark, William Bedford (1987), "All Toole's children: A reading of 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Essays in Literature, 14: 269-80.

Dunne, Sara L (2005), "Moviegoing in the Modern Novel: Holden, Binx, Ignatius", Studies in Popular Culture, 28 (1): 37-47.

Kline, Michael (1999), "Narrating the Grotesque: The Rhetoric of Humor in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces", Southern Quarterly, 37 (3-4): 283-91.

Leighton, H Vernon (2007-2012), John Kennedy Toole Research, Winona, three scholarly articles (including one free full text) and other materials.

Lowe, John (2008), "The Carnival Voices of 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State UP, pp. 159-90.

MacLauchlin, Cory (2012), Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces (biography), Da Capo Press, ISBN 978-0-306-82040-3 (literary analysis, chapter 15).

Marsh, Leslie (2013), "Critical notice of Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces" (review), Journal of Mind and Behavior, ISSN 0271-0137

Marsh, Leslie (2020), Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (book), Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 978-1-4985-8547-7

McNeil, David (1984), "A Confederacy of Dunces as Reverse Satire: The American Subgenre", Mississippi Quarterly, 38: 33-47.

Palumbo, Carmine D (1995), "John Kennedy Toole and His Confederacy of Dunces", Louisiana Folklore Miscellany, 10: 59-77.

Patteson, Richard F; Sauret, Thomas (1983), "The Consolation of Illusion: John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Texas Review, 4 (1-2): 77-87.

Pugh, Tison (2006), "'It's Prolly Fulla Dirty Stories': Masturbatory Allegory and Queer Medievalism in John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Studies in Medievalism, 15: 77-100.

Rudnicki, Robert (2009), "Euphues and the Anatomy of Influence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius", Mississippi Quarterly, 62 (1-2): 281-302.

Simmons, Jonathan (1989), "Ignatius Reilly and the Concept of the Grotesque in John Kennedy Toole's 'A Confederacy of Dunces'", Mississippi Quarterly, 43 (1): 33-43.

Simon, Richard K (1994), "John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy: Fiction and Repetition in A Confederacy of Dunces", Texas Studies in Literature & Language, 36 (1): 99-116, JSTOR 40755032.

Zaenker, Karl A (1987), "Hrotsvit and the Moderns: Her Impact on John Kennedy Toole and Peter Hacks", in Wilson, Katharina M (ed.), Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: Rara Avis in Saxonia?, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Marc, pp. 275-85.

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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.

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The new Idler magazine is out. Here's my January 2022 thought...
New Years are much associated with luck. It's why midnight is marked by rituals, from the explosive, such as igniting fireworks, to the convivial, in exchanges of good wishes. "Have a prosperous and healthy New Year!" Whether it's with a bang or a blessing, the aim is to scare off the demons of misfortune and hope that haplessness is eclipsed by happiness in the months ahead.

It's natural to do. The year is clearly turning. The days start perceptibly to grow longer. Time itself seems palpably to lean to the future. The impulse is to catalyse or impart momentum, energy, a fresh start.

Little wonder that the ancients felt the presence of gods at this time of year. Fortuna was one. A goddess of fertility, she was typically depicted blindfolded because she was felt to act randomly. Associated with whimsy and fickleness, she delivers "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", as Shakespeare noted.

She also has a wheel, which she turns like time. We are to imagine ourselves strapped to it. When the going is good, we are on the upward swing, a rise. It's a season when the cyclical nature of providence is easily forgotten. The foolish may even presume that their wealth or serendipity is deserved. They become entitled.

But if pride comes before a fall, so does privilege. The wheel has not stopped turning, any more than the sun stands still in the sky. It's merely a high point and the way down is next. Fortuna's wheel can as easily crush spirits as raise them, as effectively remove goods as bestow them.

The philosopher of late antiquity, Boethius (c480-524), called Fortuna deceitful and monstrous, and he had good reason to curse and despair. His book, The Consolation of Philosophy, addresses the ups and downs of life. It is a brilliant mix of dialogue, prose and poetry, and was hugely influential in the medieval period. If you seek a New Year's resolution, reading it would be a good one.

Born into an aristocratic Roman family, he had a very good start. Even when his father died, leaving the young boy an orphan, his luck seemed plentiful. He was adopted by the leading Roman of the day, Symmachus, who had been a consul.

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire, another event in Boethius's infancy, only produced more opportunities. He had a brilliant education, which included being able to speak fluent Greek. This made him invaluable as the various factions around the Mediterranean jostled for power. In his late twenties, Boethius was made a consul, and it didn't stop there. Fortuna then seemed ready to pass the success onto his sons. By the time he was forty, they were invested with the consulship when barely out of their teens.

However, the wheel of fortune had not stopped turning and Boethius's fall was shocking and sudden. In 523, still in his early forties, he found himself on the wrong side of a treason trial and was linked to the conspiracy. He was arrested, imprisoned, and a senatorial court condemned him to death.

Having had almost everything, he spent the last months of his life with nothing, in confinement, awaiting the day of his execution. According to one chronicler, this was carried out by a cord being twisted around his head, tightening until his eyes popped out. Then, the life was beaten from him with a club.

"I who with zest penned songs in happier days, Must now with grief embark on sombre lays," he writes at the beginning of The Consolation of Philosophy (as translated by P.G. Walsh for Oxford World's Classics). Fortuna's presence no longer feels bright, but bitter. "Now she's put on her clouded, treacherous gaze, My impious life spins out unwanted days," he continues.

But all is not lost. Whilst in prison, Boethius is visited by another divine being, Lady Philosophy. During the course of his book, Boethius explains how she freed him from the slough of despond.

She administers medicine for the mind and, although kindly, the truths she imparts are potent and hard to swallow. She tells Boethius that she is used to life's vicissitudes. They don't affect her and needn't worry him. Storms and human corruption may destroy all tawdry possessions, she explains, but there is a deeper realisation to have. What lasts and counts can never be removed. Fortune, favour and luck have nothing to do with the bestowal of what's good, beautiful and true. Further, she adds, they are yours, they are everyone's, from eternity.

At first, Boethius is resistant. He complains that he served what is good, beautiful and true in his life, so why must all he valued be so violently taken from him?

It takes him a long time to understand what Lady Philosophy seeks to impart. She is not offering shallow words of comfort or easy platitudes. Rather, she wants him to see through the changes and chances of this fleeting world to the calm centre within all things. She wants him to understand that, contrary to the old myths, Fortuna is not a random goddess. She is actually a shepherdess, drawing people back to the divine fold. This is why her greatest blessing can found in the midst of his apparently greatest loss.

He is facing death, yes. But he is also in a position to perceive that there are riches, glories and dignities that are not an accomplishment or asset, and so can never be diminished or damaged. "Whoever once shall see this shining light, will say the sun's own rays are not so bright." This is Lady Philosophy's promise.

The Consolation of Philosophy was a bestseller because people recognised what he was talking about. In an age of insecurity, it's acknowledged that life can turn sour in an hour. But such an age is also one in which to want more.

It will be nice if the New Year brings luck. It would be delightful if it enables the recollection of the boundless.

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Prisoner of Fortune, or Boethius on the inconstant

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The new Idler magazine is out. Here's my January 2022 thought... New Years are much associated with luck. It's why midnight is marked by rituals, from the explosive, such as igniting fireworks, to the convivial, in exchanges of good wishes. "Have a prosperous and healthy New Year!"

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How NOT to Read: Learning from A Confederacy of Dunces

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The trick of John Kennedy Toole’s novel is that it draws you into the story with its comedy without requiring you to consciously assess the disjointedness of the protagonist’s way of reading the world. Even without stepping back and intellectualizing the problem, you learn how not to read by experie

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On the Consolation of Philosophy ( Latin: De consolatione philosophiae), often titled as The Consolation of Philosophy or simply the Consolation, is a philosophical work by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned and awaiting execution by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, it is often described as the last great Western work of the Classical Period. Boethius' Consolation heavily influenced the philosophy of late antiquity, as well as Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity.

On the Consolation of Philosophy was written in AD 523 during a one-year imprisonment Boethius served while awaiting trial-and eventual execution-for the alleged crime of treason under the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. Boethius was at the very heights of power in Rome, holding the prestigious office of magister officiorum, and was brought down by treachery. This experience inspired the text, which reflects on how evil can exist in a world governed by God (the problem of theodicy), and how happiness is still attainable amidst fickle fortune, while also considering the nature of happiness and God. In 1891, the academic Hugh Fraser Stewart described the work as "by far the most interesting example of prison literature the world has ever seen."

Boethius writes the book as a conversation between himself and a female personification of philosophy, referred to as "Lady Philosophy". Philosophy consoles Boethius by discussing the transitory nature of wealth, fame, and power ("no man can ever truly be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune"), and the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which she calls the "one true good". She contends that happiness comes from within, and that virtue is all that one truly has because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.

Boethius engages with the nature of predestination and free will, the problem of evil and the "problem of desert", human nature, virtue, and justice. He speaks about the nature of free will and determinism when he asks whether God knows and sees all, or does man have free will. On human nature, Boethius says that humans are essentially good, and only when they give in to "wickedness" do they "sink to the level of being an animal." On justice, he says criminals are not to be abused, but rather treated with sympathy and respect, using the analogy of doctor and patient to illustrate the ideal relationship between prosecutor and criminal.

On the Consolation of Philosophy is laid out as follows:

Book I: Boethius laments his imprisonment before he is visited by Philosophy, personified as a woman.

Book II: Philosophy illustrates the capricious nature of Fate by discussing the "wheel of Fortune"; she further argues that true happiness lies in the pursuit of wisdom.

Book III: Building on the ideas laid out in the previous book, Philosophy explains how wisdom has a divine source; she also demonstrates how many earthly goods (e.g., wealth, beauty) are fleeting at best.

Book IV: Philosophy and Boethius discuss the nature of good and evil, with Philosophy offering several explanations concerned with evil events and why the wicked can never attain true happiness.

Book V: Boethius asks Philosophy about the role Chance plays in the order of everything. Philosophy argues that Chance is guided by Providence. Boethius then asks Philosophy about the compatibility of an omniscient God and free will.

In the Consolation, Boethius answered religious questions without reference to Christianity, relying solely on natural philosophy and the Classical Greek tradition. He believed in the correspondence between faith and reason. The truths found in Christianity would be no different from the truths found in philosophy. In the words of Henry Chadwick, "If the Consolation contains nothing distinctively Christian, it is also relevant that it contains nothing specifically pagan either...[it] is a work written by a Platonist who is also a Christian."

Boethius repeats the Macrobius model of the Earth in the center of a spherical cosmos.

The philosophical message of the book fits well with the religious piety of the Middle Ages. Boethius encouraged readers not to pursue worldly goods such as money and power, but to seek internalized virtues. Evil had a purpose, to provide a lesson to help change for good; while suffering from evil was seen as virtuous. Because God ruled the universe through Love, prayer to God and the application of Love would lead to true happiness. The Middle Ages, with their vivid sense of an overruling fate, found in Boethius an interpretation of life closely akin to the spirit of Christianity. The Consolation stands, by its note of fatalism and its affinities with the Christian doctrine of humility, midway between the pagan philosophy of Seneca the Younger and the later Christian philosophy of consolation represented by Thomas à Kempis.

The book is heavily influenced by Plato and his dialogues (as was Boethius himself). Its popularity can in part be explained by its Neoplatonic[citation needed ] and Christian ethical messages, although current scholarly research is still far from clear exactly why and how the work became so vastly popular in the Middle Ages.

Lady Fortune with the Wheel of Fortune in a medieval manuscript of a work by Boccaccio

From the Carolingian epoch to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond, The Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most popular and influential philosophical works, read by statesmen, poets, historians, philosophers, and theologians. It is through Boethius that much of the thought of the Classical period was made available to the Western Medieval world. It has often been said Boethius was the " last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics".

Translations into the vernacular were done by famous notables, including King Alfred ( Old English), Jean de Meun ( Old French), Geoffrey Chaucer ( Middle English), Queen Elizabeth I ( Early Modern English) and Notker Labeo ( Old High German). Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy was translated into Italian by Alberto della Piagentina (1332), Anselmo Tanso (Milan, 1520), Lodovico Domenichi (Florence, 1550), Benedetto Varchi (Florence, 1551), Cosimo Bartoli (Florence, 1551) and Tommaso Tamburini (Palermo, 1657).

Found within the Consolation are themes that have echoed throughout the Western canon: the female figure of wisdom that informs Dante, the ascent through the layered universe that is shared with Milton, the reconciliation of opposing forces that find their way into Chaucer in The Knight's Tale, and the Wheel of Fortune so popular throughout the Middle Ages.

Citations from it occur frequently in Dante's Divina Commedia. Of Boethius, Dante remarked: "The blessed soul who exposes the deceptive world to anyone who gives ear to him."

Boethian influence can be found nearly everywhere in Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry, e.g. in Troilus and Criseyde, The Knight's Tale, The Clerk's Tale, The Franklin's Tale, The Parson's Tale and The Tale of Melibee, in the character of Lady Nature in The Parliament of Fowls and some of the shorter poems, such as Truth, The Former Age and Lak of Stedfastnesse. Chaucer translated the work in his .

The Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola used some of the text in his choral work Canti di prigionia (1938). The Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe quoted parts of it in his opera or music theatre work Rites of Passage (1972-73), which was commissioned for the opening of the Sydney Opera House but was not ready in time.

Tom Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth says how "Boethian" much of the treatment of evil is in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Shippey says that Tolkien knew well the translation of Boethius that was made by King Alfred and he quotes some "Boethian" remarks from Frodo, Treebeard, and Elrond.

Miniatures of Boethius teaching and in prison from a 1385 Italian manuscript

Boethius and Consolatio Philosophiae are cited frequently by the main character Ignatius J. Reilly in the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces (1980).

It is a prosimetrical text, meaning that it is written in alternating sections of prose and metered verse. In the course of the text, Boethius displays a virtuosic command of the forms of Latin poetry. It is classified as a Menippean satire, a fusion of allegorical tale, platonic dialogue, and lyrical poetry.

Edward Gibbon described the work as "a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully."

In the 20th century, there were close to four hundred manuscripts still surviving, a testament to its popularity.

Of the work, C. S. Lewis wrote: "To acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages."

Reconstruction of lost songs

Hundreds of Latin songs were recorded in neumes from the ninth century through to the thirteenth century, including settings of the poetic passages from Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy. The music of this song repertory had long been considered irretrievably lost because the notational signs indicated only melodic outlines, relying on now-lapsed oral traditions to fill in the missing details. However, research conducted by Sam Barrett at the University of Cambridge, extended in collaboration with medieval music ensemble Sequentia, has shown that principles of musical setting for this period can be identified, providing crucial information to enable modern realisations. Sequentia performed the world premiere of the reconstructed songs from Boethius's The Consolation of Philosophy at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in April 2016, bringing to life music not heard in over 1,000 years; a number of the songs were subsequently recorded on the CD Boethius: Songs of Consolation. Metra from 11th-Century Canterbury (Glossa, 2018). The detective story behind the recovery of these lost songs is told in a documentary film, and a website launched by the University of Cambridge in 2018 provides further details of the reconstruction process, bringing together manuscripts, reconstructions, and video resources.

Blackwood, Stephen (2015). The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198718314.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy.

Cochrane, Charles Norris., Christianity and Classical Culture, 1940, ISBN 978-0865974135.

Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy, 1990, ISBN 0-19-826549-2

Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company..

Lewis, C.S. (1964), The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-47735-2 .

Relihan, Joel C., Ancient Menippean Satire, 1993, ISBN 978-0801845246

Relihan, Joel C., The Prisoner's Philosophy: Life and Death in Boethius's Consolation, 2007, ISBN 978-0872205833.

Sanderson Beck, The Consolation of Boethius an analysis and commentary. 1996.

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume I Ch.6.5: De Consolatione Philosophiae, 1907-1921.

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On the Consolation of Philosophy - Wikipedia

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On the Consolation of Philosophy ( Latin: De consolatione philosophiae), often titled as The Consolation of Philosophy or simply the Consolation , is a philosophical work by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned and awaiting execution by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, it is often described as the last great Western work of the Classical Period.

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Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné - Spotlight at Stanford

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Martin Wong, Narcolepsy, 1986 oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Estate of Martin Wong and P·P·O·W, New York

Martin Wong, one of the most distinct documentarians of New York City, loved underdogs. In his art, he portrayed loud people hanging in dank stairwells, graffiti artists who worked in the dark, and men who lost, especially those who had lost big, with years of their lives in the state prison system. At a 1984 exhibition at New York's Semaphore Gallery, he displayed an artist statement scrawled on cardboard. In it, he wrote: "Taking down to street level this time, I wanted to focus in close on some of the endless layers of conflict that has us all bound together... Always locked in, always locked out, winners and losers all..."

In the years since, Wong's paintings have slowly gained greater recognition through shows like a 2015 retrospective at the Bronx Museum of Arts. They have been admired for their mix of the real and the fantastic, the religious and the erotic. In his raw yet romantic works, a lover's poetry fills the sky, and firemen embrace beneath a burning tenement. Only rarely within art history have urban spaces seemed as full with possibility as they do in Wong's canvases.

During the '80s, in an era when Neo-Expressionism was the dominant mode, the largely self-taught artist stood out in subject and style. He sported a long mustache and cowboy duds. He was an openly gay Asian-American man during a period when the city's Asian diaspora was treated as invisible. (Only 10 years prior, Chinese activists had realized the state census hadn't bothered to even count hundreds of immigrants living in downtown tenements.) He also made it so that pinning him down on the basis of any one identity was impossible. Wong wasn't deaf, but he used ASL. He hung out with Puerto Ricans, though he didn't speak Spanish. He often felt anxious, but he used parody to sublimate his insecurities. In some outsider circles, he was an insider.
The 'Eureka Years'
Wong was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1946, and grew up in San Francisco. His parents were Chinese American, but his father had Mexican heritage, so Wong labeled himself ethnically Chino-Latino. He graduated with a degree in ceramics from Humboldt State University and won a competitive ceramics exhibition at the de Young museum in San Francisco in 1970. But he abandoned the medium for painting after the museum barred him from the exhibition for using glitter in his entry. He later worked as a street portraitist under the moniker the "Human Instamatic."

Wong termed this nomadic, freewheeling era his "Eureka Years," the name a reference to the city of Eureka, California, as well as to the word for a burst of discovery or invention. From beatniks and bohemians, he observed sexual and creative liberation. At home, he absorbed art history, building expertise in subjects like Asian decorative objects and modern painting. He created posters and sets for the gay street performance troupe the Cockettes and joined their mystical offshoot, the Angels of Light. He traveled through Asia and Europe. He never returned to school-not, at least, in a conventional sense.
Hearts on Fire
In 1978 Wong traveled to New York and lived a cheap hotel room with a view of the crumbling South Street Seaport. By his account, he got free rent in exchange for working as a night porter. His bedroom there is the subject of a meticulous 1984 painting, My Secret World (1978-81), that recalls similar works by Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch. Wong's bedroom is tidy, its walls decorated with miniatures versions of three of his early paintings. One depicts a series of thick hands sprouting from white cuff links; in ASL, they spell out, "Physiatrist Testify: Demon dogs drive man to murder," a reference to the serial killer Son of Sam, who had stalked New York the prior summer. On the bookshelf is fiction by John Cheever and Raymond Chandler, as well as texts on astrology and sports.

Later, Wong moved to an apartment on Ridge Street the Lower East Side, supporting himself with a job in the gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art uptown. He started showing his work downtown and got to know the local graffiti artists. By the end of his life, he had amassed a significant holding of street art. In 1994, he donated it to the Museum of the City of New York.

Wong also started hanging out with the poet Miguel Piñero, whom he met in 1982 at the underground art space ABC No Rio. Piñero, a cofounder of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Short Eyes, introduced Wong to the music, poetry, and art scene of the Lower East Side, known to the Puerto Rican community as Loisada. Wong fell in love with Piñero-and Loisada as seen through Piñero's eyes. They often collaborated, as they did with Attorney Street (Handball Court With Autobiographical Poem by Piñero), 1982-84.

In that painting, Wong offers a detailed vision of a graffiti mural done on a handball court wall. Floating in the grey sky is a handwritten poem by Piñero: " KNOCKED OUT LIGHTNING, DROWNED A DROP OF WATER, PUT HANDCUFF ON THE WIND, LOCK THUNDER IN JAIL, SLAPPED JESUS IN THE FACE AND RAN SATAN OUT OF HELL." Below, Wong responds in gesturing hands and verse with his own intentions: " IT'S THE REAL DEAL NEAL / I'M GONNA ROCK YOUR WORLD / MAKE YOUR PLANETS TWIRL, AIN'T NO WACK ATTACK."

Many of Wong's '80s works stress New York's verticality, causing tall building to appear to oppress or entrap the city's inhabitants. In Attorney Street, chainlink fences surround the handball court, and red-brick tenements loom like prison watchtowers. Big Heat (1988) blows up that landscape-literally. In Wong's painting, towering tenement apartments are set ablaze. The brick is scorched black, and the windows burns pink, yellow, and red. The heat of the flames is felt not only physically but also metaphorically: two firemen share kiss beneath the flames. Whether they've created the chaos or simply given in to it is left unclear.

Wong's firemen were often Black or Brown, and it is possible to read into these works an unsavory form of fetishization. (In 1988, he wrote, "I really like the way firemen smell when they get off work. It's like hickory smoked rubber and B.O.") His works from this era are at their best when desire, often confined to dreams, overtakes reality. Penitentiary Fox (1988), created the year Piñero died of liver disease, shows the entirety of Short Eyes appearing to the poet in his sleep. Piñero, dressed in white, hovers outside Sing Sing's gates, freed only in body.
Tourist Attractions
By the '90s, Loisaida was losing a battle against gentrification. Lovers, friends, and peers had died or were dying from AIDS or drug addiction. In response, Wong's work grew quiet, grimmer. In 1985 and 1986, he started making the "Last Picture Show" series, a group of life-size images of shuttered storefronts. In a 1996 interview with Yasmin Ramírez, who co-organized the 2015 Bronx Museum retrospective, Wong explained how he had purposefully waited to explore Chinatown in his paintings. He admitted to her feeling like a "tourist." Belonging was a point of anxiety for him, and that sense of apprehension comes through in his Chinatown series. In Chinese New Year's Parade (1992-94), eyes are everywhere, watching a young boy at its center. The dragon, the deities, and the crowd of Chinese New Yorker stare with gazes that accuse or question. His earthy palette was traded in for red and fluorescent blue hues.

As Wong himself began dying of AIDS during the mid-'90s, he returned to San Francisco. He made three paintings in 1998, the year before his death. In these black-and-white works, cacti from his mother's garden are reduced until they appear alien, and not a single human is present. The mood is somber and spiritual. It's the kind of work only a mystic peering inward could produce after a lifetime looking out.

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The Human Instamatic: Martin Wong's Visionary Paintings of New York Continue to Intrigue

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Martin Wong, one of the most distinct urban visionaries, painted the people and places of the Lower East Side.

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In the eighties, Martin Wong was a fixture of New York’s renegade art world. A new retrospective captures his maverick sensibility and disciplined artistry.