Alexis Statz, St John's
Course: English
Supervisor: Prof Nicolette Zeeman
Dissertation Title: The Pastoral Image: Guillaume de Deguileville’s Spiritual Pedagogy in the Pelerinage Allegories
Biographical Information
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia, where I majored in English (Hons). After that, I undertook an MPhil in Medieval Literature at the University of Cambridge (2017). I stayed on at Cambridge for my doctoral studies, which is funded by a Benefactor's Scholarship at St John's College.
Research Interests
My research primarily focuses on medieval allegory and spiritual pedagogy in Middle French and English texts. I am especially interested in the writings of Guillaume de Deguileville, a fourteenth-century Cistercian monk and poet. In my doctoral thesis, I argue that Deguileville imagines the reformation of the soul as a form of sacramental craft. Most recently, I have turned my attention to the role of diagrams in medieval literary and manuscript culture, the subject of my forthcoming article in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
Selected Publications
‘Spiritual Diagrams and Cognition in the Writings of Guillaume de Deguileville’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 56:2 (2026) (forthcoming)
