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.