Experience

Abstract

Abstract This chapter argues that Deguileville finally registers and confronts the epistemological contradictions that crystallize in his poem, and does so by staging a series of crises experienced by its first-person dreamer/protagonist/narrator figure. The pilgrim first undergoes a deeply transformative experience of conversion at the Rock of Penitence, closely associated with the gift of the famous ABC prayer handed to him by Grace Dieu, personification of divine grace. The two experiences—prayer and conversion—finally enable a more fundamental reconfiguration of the poem’s underlying values and assumptions. The crisis of the pilgrim thus also denotes an authorial crisis, signalling Deguileville’s turn away from didactic allegory towards a new type of mystical and contemplative poetry, which finds its fullest expression in his late Latin corpus of poetry (1355–60?). In parallel, however, Deguileville also becomes engaged in the effort to recuperate and redefine his original poetic project as crystallized in the first Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine (1331), releasing a revised version of the latter (1355), followed by two further pilgrimage poems, the Pèlerinage de l’Âme (1356) and the Pèlerinage de Jesuscrist (1358), as well as an earlier reflection on the semantics of allegorical signification (Le Dit de la fleur de lis, 1338). The remainder of the chapter proposes a new analysis of the trajectory of Deguileville’s entire poetic career, reconsidering the divergent and conflicting aspirations of his different poems within the larger oeuvre, and proposing an analysis of the evolving nature of Deguileville’s poetic vision over time.