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A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code
A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code
A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code
Ebook46 pages34 minutes

A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Literary Newsmakers for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Literary Newsmakers for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 20, 2016
ISBN9781535836111
A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code

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    A Study Guide for Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code - Gale

    1

    The Da Vinci Code

    Dan Brown

    2003

    Introduction

    The Da Vinci Code became one of the first notable international literary events of the twenty-first century as soon as it was published in early 2003. It is a fast-paced thriller involving Harvard professor of religious symbology Robert Langdon, who must solve a murder mystery before he is arrested for the murder himself. While the plot moves along rapidly, the narrative and dialogue slow down briefly at times to explore weighty issues and consider controversial questions. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Did early Christian leaders attempt to suppress her significance? Did Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea establish the divinity of Jesus Christ in 325 A.D.? Was Leonardo da Vinci one of the keepers of the secret of the Holy Grail, as Leigh Teabing, the historian scholar, declares? Did he encode his art with symbols that suggested a Christian history far different from the one with which we are familiar? Though fictional characters raise these questions, Brown, in interviews about his novel, generated much debate by defending the possibility that Christian history has been carefully and artificially constructed. When asked in an interview what he would change if he were writing the book as nonfiction rather than fiction, for example, Brown replied he would change nothing.

    Religious leaders, Christian scholars, historians, and media figures reacted strongly to Brown's novel. In 2004, it was banned from Lebanon when Catholic leaders protested against its content. In 2005, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone publicly responded to the claims of the novel, which he called a castle of lies. A series of reactionary books bent on disproving the novel's theories emerged, and documentaries exploring the controversies it brings out were aired on networks from ABC to the History Channel. As of 2005, Columbia Pictures was developing the film adaptation, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, and Ian McKellen, to be released in 2006.

    Author Biography

    Dan Brown was born on June 22, 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire. His mother was a professional musician who specialized in sacred works, and his father, Richard Brown, was a Presidential Award-winning math teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy. After attending Exeter himself and graduating in 1982, Brown went to Amherst College, where he received a bachelor's degree in English Literature in 1986. He returned to teach at Phillips as an English instructor.

    While teaching in 1996, Brown began generating ideas for his first novel when he learned that the U.S. Secret Service had detained one of his students for composing an e-mail message that appeared to threaten the president of the United States. The novel, titled Digital Fortress (1998), explores the tension between privacy and national security. His second novel, Angels and Demons (2000), introduces a character that would become the hero of his future works, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, and concerns the Illuminati,

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