Magento: Rendering blank page when calling template from Ajax

First off, I must apologize for my lack of knowledge on the subject. I'm still new to Magento, and with the information I've come across, I should've been able to get this working. I started off here. I'm able to get the Ajax method to make a call, but I'm getting a blank 2column-left.phtml as my output (So I'm seeing the header, left column, blank main column, and footer). I have my files set up as so:

app/local/MyModule/Featured/Block/Featured.php

<?php  
class MyModule_Featured_Block_Featured extends Mage_Core_Block_Template  
{  
    public function __construct()  
    {  
        $this->_controller = 'featured';  
        $this->_blockGroup = 'featured';  
        parent::__construct();  
    }  
}  
?>

app/local/MyModule/Featured/controllers/FeaturedController.php

<?php 
class MyModule_Featured_FeaturedController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action
{
    public function displayAction()
    {
        $this->loadLayout()->renderLayout();
    }
}
?> 

app/local/MyModule/Featured/etc/config.xml

<config>
    <modules>
        <MyModule_Featured>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </MyModule_Featured>
    </modules>
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <featured>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>MyModule_Featured</module>
                    <frontName>featured</frontName>
                </args>
            </featured>
        </routers>
    </frontend>
</config>

app/design/frontend/default/myLayout/layout/local.xml

<config>
    <featured_featured_display>
        <block type="module/block"开发者_JAVA百科 name="root" output="toHtml" template="catalog/product/featured.phtml" />
    </featured_featured_display>
</config>

Ajax Code on Homepage custom phtml:

var url = "<?php echo $this->getUrl('featured/featured/display') ;?>";
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
    jQuery('#featured-products').load(url);
});

I believe the layout file's root node should be <layout> and not <config>.

_{P.S.
If you wanted to do without jQuery - to avoid bloat - Magento already has Prototype as standard and can do exactly the same.}

var url = "<?php echo $this->getUrl('featured/featured/display') ?>";
document.observer('dom:loaded', function(){
    new Ajax.Updater('featured-products', url);
});

Load layout includes the default handle normally, so my guess is that your assignment has no effect because there is a root note being loaded already. Try removing the root node first, and then add it back as your only node.