An Analysis Of The Religious Signs In Da Vinci Code In Light Of C.S. Peirce's Semiotic Theory

In the last decades,religious semiotics,being one of the main branches of religious studies,as well as of semiotics,has received more and more attention in interdisciplinary research.A serious academic study of religious symbols would make sense only by means of an adequate theoretical approach.Among different approaches in the study of religious symbols,C.S.Peirce's semiotic theory stands out for the lucidity and wide applicability of its concept of the triadic sign relation.Renowned as a philosopher,logician,mathematician,Peirce is also called "the father of the semiotics." He devoted his life to develop a general theory of signs,which he himself called "semeiotic," and applied it in various areas.Peirce's semiotic theory has opened up a new perspective of semiotic studies,and made great contribution to further the development of semiotics.His semiotic theory also shed light on our understanding of religious symbols.The present author attempts to apply Peirce's tripartite division of semeiotic in analyzing the different types of religious signs or symbols in Dan Brown's best-selling novel the Da Vinci Code.It is hoped that in the light of Peirce's theory of signs,we may reach a better understanding of the complexity and implications in those religious signs in the book.The present thesis tries to explore first the writing style of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in terms of the original text and its Chinese translation,so as to get a general picture of how religious symbols work in modern western popular novels.The second stage of our thesis is to present the tripartite division of semeiotic in Peirce.The next part is an illustrated analysis of different types of religious signs and symbols in Dan Brown's text in light of Peirce's theory of signs.The ultimate goal of this thesis is to argue that Peirce's semeiotic theory can help us to reach a better understanding of the religious symbols in a given text.