ABSTRACT
Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl novels revel in the humorous physicality of fi lth and ordure: excrement, farts, animal fat, and other slimy, stinky, and oozy bodily productions litter their pages, often provoking the reader’s hearty laughter, albeit laughter larded with disgust.1 Mulch Diggums, the fl atulent dwarf who eats and immediately excretes vast amounts of dirt, most obviously enacts this excremental aesthetic within the series, and various other characters similarly embrace the lower bodily elements during their daring adventures. The excremental intersects with sexuality as these Fowl characters negotiate the trifold pressures of puberty, adolescence, and romance, which in many ways present ordeals as challenging as the ones concocted by their enemies. Artemis’s narrative trajectory-from amoral child genius mostly innocent of human sexuality to heterosexual teen disappointed in his inability to quell his erotic instincts-necessitates a humorously perverse path.
