Ring Structure Writing

Chiastic Structure

I learned a new word today: Chiastic. It's a narrative pattern often used in ancient texts and holy books that is described as a "ring structure." Whenever I hear "ring structure" I naturally think of the torus.

With my theory of everything book called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I mentioned that I wrote it in a toroidal fashion, with the theory being stated and restated in various repetitive forms that circle back throughout the book. This replicates the way toroidal energy goes around and through and around and through the torus in an unending flow.

Turns out this is known as "chiastic narrative." So there you go. Without realizing it, my book was written in the same manner as other ancient holy books. How cool is that?

Here's what wikipedia (boo, hiss) says about it:

Chiastic structure

Chiastic structure, or chiastic pattern, is a literary technique in narrative motifs and other textual passages. An example of chiastic structure would be two ideas, A and B, together with variants A' and B', being presented as A,B,B',A'. Chiastic structures that involve more components are sometimes called "ring structures" or "ring compositions". These may be regarded as chiasmus scaled up from words and clauses to larger segments of text.

Example of a ring structure in the Quran

These often symmetrical patterns are commonly found in ancient literature such as the epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Classicist Bruno Gentili describes this technique as "the cyclical, circular, or 'ring' pattern (ring composition). Here the idea that introduced a compositional section is repeated at its conclusion, so that the whole passage is framed by material of identical content".^[1] Meanwhile, in classical prose, scholars often find chiastic narrative techniques in the Histories of Herodotus:

Herodotus frequently uses ring composition or 'epic regression' as a way of supplying background information for something discussed in the narrative. First an event is mentioned briefly, then its precedents are reviewed in reverse chronological order as far back as necessary; at that point the narrative reverses itself and moves forward in chronological order until the event in the main narrative line is reached again.^[2]

Various chiastic structures are also seen in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon,^[3] and the Quran.