Allégorie et subjectivité dans le Livre de l’Espérance

This article examines Alain Chartier’s use of allegorical figures in his incomplete, vernacular prosimetrum, the Livre de l’Espérance, on the one hand to present to a broad public his understanding of late medieval cognitive psychology, and on the other hand to furnish his readers with a vivid example of one individual’s struggle with depression in an effort to help readers orient their own internal senses towards the acquisition of knowledge and divine truth.