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Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition
Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today’s scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world. Found in the Bible and in writings from as far afield as Egypt, China, Indonesia, Greece, and Russia, ring composition is too widespread to have come from a single source. Does it perhaps derive from the way the brain works? What is its function in social contexts? The author examines ring composition, its principles and functions, in a cross-cultural way. She focuses on ring composition in Homer’s Iliad , the Bible’s book of Numbers , and, for a challenging modern example, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy , developing a persuasive argument for reconstruing famous books and rereading neglected ones.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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382 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
non-fiction-to-read
December 7, 2014NTS: ordered in pb, basically because of the analysis of Mike Klimo re the Star Wars series.
Which, although it's a brilliant analysis, only proves that sure, you can do clever things with narrative meta-structure, but at heart you've got to have a sound story to tell, with engaging dialogue and three-dimensional characters. Or this happens.
Which, although it's a brilliant analysis, only proves that sure, you can do clever things with narrative meta-structure, but at heart you've got to have a sound story to tell, with engaging dialogue and three-dimensional characters. Or this happens.
May 5, 2008
I wanted a lot more about the meaning of ring composition, and Douglas oh-so-tantalizingly alludes to the ring structure's capability to change the meaning of the text itself (in discussing the book of Numbers) and to the possibility that the ring structure's simultaneous development (or at any rate, independent development, in different times, places) may reveal something about the human mind and how it works. Instead, Douglas expounds on the ring's characteristics and justifies her choices of examples through deft (sometimes dubious) exegesis. Douglas characterizes the lectures that she gave on ring composition that led to this essay as "a call for help." This essay, too, seems a call for help.
Ring composition, I believe Douglas to be saying, may have been a mnemonic device of sorts, allowing the bard to organize the story in such a way that the most important part of the narrative actually occurs at the center of the telling, with either side more or less paralleling its correspondent, or a rigidly formed structure that showed the composer as a connoiseur, an expert, and hence, a way of displaying authority. If she settles on one of these hypotheses, I missed it. She writes that this way of telling is present in the Bible, in the Iliad and the Aeneid, and Sterne's "Tristram Shandy." Her exploration of "Tristram Shandy," as the "mid-turn" of her essay, is the heart of the essay, and it is quite impressive. And her ideas about ring composition are interesting and quite adequate to the book's purpose. But she brings the other issues (those above) into play without exploring them. If composing a story as a ring is partly in response to the brain's method of storing or recalling information, what can these works tell us about the brain? Isn't that interesting, too? And Douglas seems to be saying that it is an in-born technique/skill, she just isn't willing to expand on the idea.
Still well worth the read, if for nothing else than a wonderful reading of "Tristram Shandy" that explodes the myth that it is nothing more than a "Cock and Bull Story." or that it IS a "Cock and Bull Story," but a literal one. I also liked her "latch," the concluding chapter, which addresses the dominant modes of literary structure and their relationship to the intellectual currents of the time. Literary structures as potsherds? Yep.
Ring composition, I believe Douglas to be saying, may have been a mnemonic device of sorts, allowing the bard to organize the story in such a way that the most important part of the narrative actually occurs at the center of the telling, with either side more or less paralleling its correspondent, or a rigidly formed structure that showed the composer as a connoiseur, an expert, and hence, a way of displaying authority. If she settles on one of these hypotheses, I missed it. She writes that this way of telling is present in the Bible, in the Iliad and the Aeneid, and Sterne's "Tristram Shandy." Her exploration of "Tristram Shandy," as the "mid-turn" of her essay, is the heart of the essay, and it is quite impressive. And her ideas about ring composition are interesting and quite adequate to the book's purpose. But she brings the other issues (those above) into play without exploring them. If composing a story as a ring is partly in response to the brain's method of storing or recalling information, what can these works tell us about the brain? Isn't that interesting, too? And Douglas seems to be saying that it is an in-born technique/skill, she just isn't willing to expand on the idea.
Still well worth the read, if for nothing else than a wonderful reading of "Tristram Shandy" that explodes the myth that it is nothing more than a "Cock and Bull Story." or that it IS a "Cock and Bull Story," but a literal one. I also liked her "latch," the concluding chapter, which addresses the dominant modes of literary structure and their relationship to the intellectual currents of the time. Literary structures as potsherds? Yep.
March 18, 2013
Okay so this one is not for everyone. I found it fascinating. This book is about an ancient literary style in which the composition is organized with the main point right in the middle and with mirroring subjects rippling out before and after, and of course with an ending that fastens on to the beginning. This form is used in the book of Chronicles, among other ancient texts. Thre writer is very engagingand makes a highly technical topic quite palatable.
April 8, 2009
Thank goodness for this book. Now I have the vocabulary to use when I explain why I distrust the narrative structure of the novel. Also a recovery project to help make sense of literary cast-offs and books of antiquity that don't fit modern temporal/narrative structures.
May 3, 2012
Brilliant. I loved this book and its premise about how the oral social setting of the biblical authors influenced the structure of the texts and why modern, literate thinkers need a totally different strategy to understand the underlying process and meaning of the stories.
December 31, 2018
Five stars. Another good one from The Terry Lectures.
Preface
"This leads to another point: in a ring composition the meaning is located in the middle. A reader who reads a ring as if it were a straight linear composition will miss the meaning" (p. x).
one - Ancient Rings Worldwide
"Vandermeersch relates the dominance of parrallelism in Chinese thought to the great importance of tortise divination from early times" (p. 8).
"It is a lesson to teach us to expect subtle sophistication and to realize how much we miss in the Bible when we try to read the apparently simple stories without knowing the sounds of the Hebrew words" (p. 15).
two - Modes and Genres
three - How to Construct and Recognize a Ring
"The book of Numbers solves the problem of marking individual sections by using a very strong principal of alliteration. The whole book is organized as a system of strictly alternating narratives and laws" (p. 37).
four - Alternating Bands - Numbers
five - The Central Place - Numbers
"In Numbers the central place starts at chapter 16 and includes 17 (section VII in Fig. 9 in Chapter 4)" (p. 61).
"Because of the way it was elaborated throughout the book and tied into the mid-turn we can assume that protecting the status of the Aaronite priests is the principal objective of the editors of Numbers. . . . .
. . . .
. . . . In the region of Israel the eighth century was the scene of massive change. Particularly with the rise of the Assyrian empire and . . . ." (p.64).
six - Modern, Not-Quite Rings
"Making divisions and seeing similarites, matching parts, like to like - this is the essence of creativity" (p. 72).
"The book of Numbers arranged in a twelve-part ring may stand for the revolving seasons of the year" (p. 73)
seven - Tristram Shandy - Testing for Ring Shape
"If we have to decide what this book is about, we could well say it is about the disorder of life, its incessant ups and downs and sundry misadventures" (p. 96).
eight - Two Central Places, Two Rings - The Iliad
"With the eight days in the middle Whitman makes of the whole numerical scheme a regular ABCBA structure: (1-9)-(1-12)-(8)-(12-1)-(9-1)" (p. 105).
nine - Alternating Nights and Days - The Iliad
ten - The Ending - How To Complete a Ring
"Words of approval play no role, although he will look pleased when the suit fits him" (p. 128).
"These thoughts suggest further that'homing'is another of our fundamental mental resources" (p. 137). We are 1 hour and 15 minutes from landing at RDU, as I type this, on our way back from Istanbul.
eleven - The Latch - Jacobson's Conundrum
"The same factors that cause ring composition to lose repute in the first place could have been at work with us over the past fifty years to hide it from our vision" (p. 148).
Preface
"This leads to another point: in a ring composition the meaning is located in the middle. A reader who reads a ring as if it were a straight linear composition will miss the meaning" (p. x).
one - Ancient Rings Worldwide
"Vandermeersch relates the dominance of parrallelism in Chinese thought to the great importance of tortise divination from early times" (p. 8).
"It is a lesson to teach us to expect subtle sophistication and to realize how much we miss in the Bible when we try to read the apparently simple stories without knowing the sounds of the Hebrew words" (p. 15).
two - Modes and Genres
three - How to Construct and Recognize a Ring
"The book of Numbers solves the problem of marking individual sections by using a very strong principal of alliteration. The whole book is organized as a system of strictly alternating narratives and laws" (p. 37).
four - Alternating Bands - Numbers
five - The Central Place - Numbers
"In Numbers the central place starts at chapter 16 and includes 17 (section VII in Fig. 9 in Chapter 4)" (p. 61).
"Because of the way it was elaborated throughout the book and tied into the mid-turn we can assume that protecting the status of the Aaronite priests is the principal objective of the editors of Numbers. . . . .
. . . .
. . . . In the region of Israel the eighth century was the scene of massive change. Particularly with the rise of the Assyrian empire and . . . ." (p.64).
six - Modern, Not-Quite Rings
"Making divisions and seeing similarites, matching parts, like to like - this is the essence of creativity" (p. 72).
"The book of Numbers arranged in a twelve-part ring may stand for the revolving seasons of the year" (p. 73)
seven - Tristram Shandy - Testing for Ring Shape
"If we have to decide what this book is about, we could well say it is about the disorder of life, its incessant ups and downs and sundry misadventures" (p. 96).
eight - Two Central Places, Two Rings - The Iliad
"With the eight days in the middle Whitman makes of the whole numerical scheme a regular ABCBA structure: (1-9)-(1-12)-(8)-(12-1)-(9-1)" (p. 105).
nine - Alternating Nights and Days - The Iliad
ten - The Ending - How To Complete a Ring
"Words of approval play no role, although he will look pleased when the suit fits him" (p. 128).
"These thoughts suggest further that'homing'is another of our fundamental mental resources" (p. 137). We are 1 hour and 15 minutes from landing at RDU, as I type this, on our way back from Istanbul.
eleven - The Latch - Jacobson's Conundrum
"The same factors that cause ring composition to lose repute in the first place could have been at work with us over the past fifty years to hide it from our vision" (p. 148).
August 3, 2019
Read this after it was mentioned in, I think, Clare Lois Carroll's Orlando Furioso: A Stoic Comedy.
Looks at the composition of ring structures using examples found in The Iliad, Gregory of Tours' The History of the Franks, Trystam Shandy, and the Biblical books of Genesis, Leviticus and Numbers. Fascinating stuff. Good stuff theorizing on the questions of why it became a popular structure and why it died out.
I tried to write this review in ring structure but I am lazy and have other things to do, which sort of answers that second question.
Looks at the composition of ring structures using examples found in The Iliad, Gregory of Tours' The History of the Franks, Trystam Shandy, and the Biblical books of Genesis, Leviticus and Numbers. Fascinating stuff. Good stuff theorizing on the questions of why it became a popular structure and why it died out.
I tried to write this review in ring structure but I am lazy and have other things to do, which sort of answers that second question.
April 7, 2020
Really good.
January 21, 2025
Ring composition is my Roman empire
October 4, 2016
This short book is on a topic that is beyond my amateur interest in literature and its forms. Using Bible Numbers and other texts such as Sterne's' Tristam Shandy, the author discussed the "ring" patterns in the text. Instead of reading a text in a linear fashion, for example, ABC, where the "C" is the conclusive ending, the ring pattern is "ABCBA" where the central theme is actually in the center instead of the ending. This point may unlock meanings that were not evident before.
However this is not entirely accessible at my level. The 3-star reflects only my limited ability to appreciate.
However this is not entirely accessible at my level. The 3-star reflects only my limited ability to appreciate.
January 11, 2013
Thinking in Circles is a gift to the twenty-first reader. Mary Douglas presents formalism at its finest with sublime simplicity. Seven criteria serve to elevate and explain several works often dismissed as unstructured and unsophisticated. Ring composition places meaning in the middle of a text reflecting and refracting the beginning and end, mirrored and masked throughout. Her examples range from Numbers to Tristram Shandy, but you’ll see it in something you read this year.
July 5, 2013
Douglas suggests that many antique texts are misunderstood or completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written - ring composition - is unfamiliar today. Fascinating concept with clear examples in the Iliad and Numbers.
The fact that some texts are built on top of a scaffolding is riveting. It reminds of of some of the concepts that Oulipo works under, specifically Perecs' Life A User’s Manual, which is based on based on the Knights Tour.
The fact that some texts are built on top of a scaffolding is riveting. It reminds of of some of the concepts that Oulipo works under, specifically Perecs' Life A User’s Manual, which is based on based on the Knights Tour.
January 24, 2016
If you want to learn more about the ring-symmetry in the Harry Potter series, this is not a good read. To listen to an audio lecture by John Granger.
If you want to learn about this history of ring-symmetry and struggle through a lot of thick, academic writing, this is the book for you. The ideas and storytelling structure outlined is fascinating. But this book is just far too academically written (for me). Doesn't do the concept and system of ring symmetry justice for the lay reader.
If you want to learn about this history of ring-symmetry and struggle through a lot of thick, academic writing, this is the book for you. The ideas and storytelling structure outlined is fascinating. But this book is just far too academically written (for me). Doesn't do the concept and system of ring symmetry justice for the lay reader.
February 3, 2016
Interesting observations and a novel way of presenting a narrative structure. Douglas delivers the information with a learned if somewhat dry voice. Also, the ring composition just seems like a fascinating foundation for a story.
I was onboard with s lot of her comments until the end, where it seemed like she felt the ring structure fell out of fashion because people's aesthetics got lazy. Or they don't want to challenge themselves anymore. It was an odd conclusion.
I was onboard with s lot of her comments until the end, where it seemed like she felt the ring structure fell out of fashion because people's aesthetics got lazy. Or they don't want to challenge themselves anymore. It was an odd conclusion.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews