Theorizing the literary cookbook: making a case for textual autonomy and materializing fiction with respect to Cynthia Lejeune Nobles’ <i>A Confederacy of Dunces Cookbook</i>

A literary cookbook represents a form of experimental writing that embeds non-fictional elements, mostly recipes, within a narrative framework drawn from the fictional world. By doing so, the text subverts the conventional expectation of associating a recipe book with non-fiction and by extension, truth claims. Simultaneously, it challenges the readers’ assumption that a narrative framework belongs solely to the realm of fiction and non-truth. It thus makes a case for how fictive and nonfictive discourses can function as distinct yet equally valid means of engaging with the actual world within the same text. Drawing on theories of panfictionality and transtextuality specifically intertextuality and hypertextuality, this paper attempts to highlight the insufficiencies of existing frameworks in capturing the complexities of the genre and makes a case for new theorization. Cynthia Lejeune Nobles’ A Confederacy of Dunces Cookbook which is based on John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces acts as a representative case for the conceptual understanding of literary cookbooks. The study explores how the literary cookbook reconfigures and materialises fiction, asserting its identity as a standalone text while embodying the narrative in culinary form. The paper adheres to a qualitative mode of inquiry and, through its textual hermeneutics, expands the possibilities within the field of food studies.