Postmodernist Approach To The Da Vinci Code

Written by American author Dan Brown, the mystery-detective fiction The Da Vinci Code has taken the publishing world by a storm since it first appeared in the United States in 2003. The novel has remained on top of the New York Times bestseller list for some 137 weeks and continues to be on bestseller lists worldwide, which has had 60.5 million copies in print by May 2006 and has been translated into 44 languages. Millions of people fascinate in what happened in the story and willingly follow symbologist Robert Langdon into the fictional world.Winning a great success worldwide, the novel not only rekindles the ordinary readers'interest in European history, religion, architecture and arts, but also arrests the eye of serious scholars from different disciplines as well, especially in aspects of history and religion. However its challenging speculations on the Holy Grail legend and Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity have been strongly denounced by Roman Catholics and other Christians as a dishonest attack on the Catholic Church.Anyway, The Da Vinci Code does have been widely acclaimed by many famous critics at home and abroad. But among them, there are few articles that emphasize research on the postmodern narrative art of this novel. Most western scholars still concentrate on its controversial religious subject, while only a few articles by Chinese researchers focus their attention to the novel's language style and fictional techniques, leaving other issues remaining inadequately expounded. Therefore, the present thesis intends to analyses Dan Brown's exquisite narrative art on measures of three major postmodernistic features, indeterminacy, intertexuality and fragmentation.The present thesis will consist of five parts, including the introduction, three primary analysis chapters and a conclusion.The introduction starts with the background knowledge on Dan Brown and his novel. And later it covers the literature reviews of the novel The Da Vinci Code, and touches the brief tendencies of postmodernism and its features. The following three chapters which deal with the three prominent features respectively are the major discussions in this thesis. Chapter One takes indeterminacy as its centre, and includes the analysis of indeterminate elements appeared in the novel, such as the mixed fiction genres, double references of language and word play, blurring of fact and fiction, and open ending. There are many terms and information on disputed issues mentioned in the process of analysis, but the point is not to make judgment on all the matters, but to enjoy the effect of uncertainty created by Dan Brown with all the materials.Chapter Two concentrates on the feature of intertexuality, and explores the deep relationship between Dan Brown's novel and others secret resources, including Holy Blood and Holy Grail, some biblical resources, and elements from real world materials, such as famous paintings, often-seen symbols, Walt Disney's cartoon films, different brand names and advertising slogans, popular magazines, lecture flyer, alphabet diagram, reverse text, the websites of the secret organization, and even the search results from Internet. .Chapter Three chooses fragmentation as the focus, and deepens the study by tracing postmodern narrative techniques used in the novel, especially in the aspects of non-linear narrative structure, shifting narrative perspective and disordered time sequence. With the help of those devices, readers can witness things happening in different places, and even go further into the fictional world and experience the exciting and break-breathing journey themselves.All of these discussions lead to the conclusion that as a postmodern fiction, the creation of The Da Vinci Code is a great success. It does not matter whether the issue mentioned in novel is real or not. The adventure to find"Holy Grail"is the journey to find truth itself. It inspires the readers to look at history and the world from a new postmodernistc perspective.