Thinking in Circles. An Essay on Ring Composition

Mary DOUGLAS, Thinking in Circles. An Essay on Ring Composition, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007, 192 p.
ISBN 9780300117622
ISBN-10 0300117620


SUMMARY

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.


CONTENTS

Preface
Ancient Rings Worldwide
Modes and Genres
How to Construct and Recognize a Ring
Alternating Bands: Numbers
The Central Place: Numbers
Modern, Not-Quite Rings
Tristram Shandy: Testing for Ring Shape
Two Central Places, Two Rings: The Iliad
Alternating Nights and Days: The Iliad
The Ending: How to Complete a Ring
The Latch: Jakobson's Conundrum
Notes
Index


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Douglas was professor of social anthropology at University College London until her retirement. She is now Honorary Research Fellow there.