Picaresque novel
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The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels
One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration).
Title page of the book Guzmán de Alfarache (1599)
A Confederacy of Dunces
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A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole. It was published in 1980, eleven years after Toole's death. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy
Picaresque novel
…Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1969), and Arto Paasilinna's The Year of the Hare (1975). Examples from the 1980s include John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces, which was published in 1980, eleven years after the author's suicide, and won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It follows the adventures of Ignatius…
First edition cover (1980), illustration by Ed Lindlof
Rex Parade Float of Ignatius Reilly commemorating "The Confederacy of Dunces"
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