"Magnifying God Manyfolde": James Ryman's Practice of Repetition.

This article examines the poems of James Ryman (fl. 1492), a Franciscan friar at Canterbury. With reference to their mise-en-page in the sole surviving manuscript, the partial holograph Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.1.12, it focuses on Ryman's habit of repeating both scriptural and liturgical...

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Published in:Modern Philology Vol. 122; no. 2; pp. 165 - 189
Main Author: Griffiths, Jane
Format: Article
Published: University of Chicago Press Nov2024
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: "Magnifying God Manyfolde": James Ryman's Practice of Repetition.
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        au: Griffiths, Jane
        affil: University of Oxford
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        Poetry (Literary form)
        Repetition (Rhetoric)
        Manuscripts
        Writing processes
        Mnemonics
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        subj:
          Poetry (Literary form)
          Repetition (Rhetoric)
          Manuscripts
          Writing processes
          Mnemonics
      ab: This article examines the poems of James Ryman (fl. 1492), a Franciscan friar at Canterbury. With reference to their mise-en-page in the sole surviving manuscript, the partial holograph Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.1.12, it focuses on Ryman's habit of repeating both scriptural and liturgical quotations and word blocks of his own composition across multiple poems, arguing that such repetitions are not failures of technical skill but traces of his writing process. First, it contrasts Ryman's repetitions with those of a number of his contemporaries, positing that his have been experienced as problematic because they do not necessarily respond to attempts to link form with content. Second, by demonstrating how he builds on established mnemonic techniques, it shows that his repeated words and phrases serve as mental building blocks which not only facilitate composition but constitute his subject matter. It thus sets out a new way of reading Ryman, with a focus on praxis rather than product; finally, it considers what such an approach contributes to recent debates around the critical usefulness of "lyric" as a genre.
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