Between 1975 and 1994, William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote ten innovative spy novels on the continuing adventures of the series hero, CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Set in the 1950s through the mid-1990s, the series may be read allegorically as a Christian-conservative pilgrim's progress through the Cold War. For Buckley invites the reader to interpret this all-American hero as a Western knight, who struggles for the survival of individualist, humane values in a Holy War against totalitarian barbarians and who personifies in particular the American natural law consensus, as described by John Courtney Murray, S. J. Throughout all ten novels, Blackford Oakes carries this humanistic burden on behalf of his Christian individualist author: to bear reluctant witness to the ineffable crimes against humanity of this century. / The reader-critic may reconstruct Buckley's didactic intent for the novels, and the lay reader's constructions, with a theory of interpreters' accord. This law-and-humanities approach redefines the text as an instrument of record for three indispensable parties: the composer, the reader, and the critic. In the case of Buckley's novels, the author as the composer, the reader, and the critic interpret or reinterpret in turn the conventions of the spy thriller, especially its heroic conventions. Both Buckley and his readers thus may call on Blackford's character as a mutual "agent" of self-interpretation or co-interpretation, respectively. As a self-described "performing writer," Buckley takes delight in manipulating this interpretive sequence. Finally, by renegotiating the terms of the postwar thriller, Buckley has succeeded in coining his own didactic subgenre, the allegorical thriller. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-05, Section: A, page: 1771. / Major Professor: Fred L. Standley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77458 |
| Contributors | Turner, Sondra Lee., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 458 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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