Ignatius descending - A psychoanalytical reading of a confederacy of letters

Abstract: Walker Percy writes, in the foreword of "A confederacy of dunces", “I hesitate to use the word comedy - though comedy it is - because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that …It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from.” In this essay I have analyzed where the sadness comes from, through the psychoanalytic theories of Jaqcues Lacan, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, mainly. My standpoint is that no text or utterance is ever completed, and therefore it is not absolute. The text itself is the strongest manifestation of power in the novel. When scrutinizing the text itself, I have treated it as one of the analysands, trying to reveal the suppressed information underneath the surface of the implied story.