“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 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.