Summary
Ring composition is a way of building a text as a circle: the ending answers the beginning, the sections between pair off in mirrored order, and the main point sits at the middle turn, not at the end. Scholars of Homer and the Bible long studied it. The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1921–2007) made it the subject of her last book, ‘Thinking in Circles’ (2007), reading the Book of Numbers, the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Tristram Shandy’ as rings.
Of the form she wrote: “It controls meaning, it restricts what is said”. Her bolder claim, that modern Western readers misjudge such texts as muddled, is the one her reviewer Päivi Mehtonen found weakest.
Rationale
An example from what Part 2 calls the ‘Told’ zone: the shape of a story, as well as its content, carries assumptions. Expecting the point to come last is a reading habit, learned like any other.