Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life - Hardcover

Pleij, Herman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231117027 ISBN 13: 9780231117029

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Imagine a dreamland where roasted pigs wander about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, where grilled geese fly directly into one's mouth, where cooked fish jump out of the water and land at one's feet. The weather is always mild, the wine flows freely, sex is readily available, and all people enjoy eternal youth.

Such is Cockaigne. Portrayed in legend, oral history, and art, this imaginary land became the most pervasive collective dream of medieval times-an earthly paradise that served to counter the suffering and frustration of daily existence and to allay anxieties about an increasingly elusive heavenly paradise.

Illustrated with extraordinary artwork from the Middle Ages, Herman Pleij's Dreaming of Cockaigne is a spirited account of this lost paradise and the world that brought it to life. Pleij takes three important texts as his starting points for an inspired of the panorama of ideas, dreams, popular religion, and literary and artistic creation present in the late Middle Ages. What emerges is a well-defined picture of the era, furnished with a wealth of detail from all of Europe, as well as Asia and America.

Pleij draws upon his thorough knowledge of medieval European literature, art, history, and folklore to describe the fantasies that fed the tales of Cockaigne and their connections to the central obsessions of medieval life.

About this title

About the Author

Herman Pleij lectures on Dutch historical literature at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of the Dutch best-seller Het Gilde van de Blauwe Schuit(The guild of the blue barge), an account of the rituals surrounding the celebration of Carnival in the Middle Ages, and the critically acclaimed book De sneeuwpoppen van 1511(The snowmen of 1511), a lively study of the rise of urban culture and middle-class morality in the southern Netherlands of the late Middle Ages.

Reviews

Like Atlantis and El Dorado, the land of Cockaigne was a fictional utopia, a place where idleness (money could be earned even while one slept) and gluttony (buildings and roads were made of food just waiting to be devoured) were the principal occupations. Grounded in peasant culture, Cockaigne was never taken seriously by medieval men and women but offered a way to cope with immediate concerns of famine and backbreaking work, as well as more monumental fears about heaven and the New World recently opened up by European adventurers. Over time, as control over the food supply increased and a more modern work ethic became established, these fears diminished, and stories about Cockaigne faded away. This work is a serious and even ponderous scholarly study based on two Dutch manuscripts that the author, a lecturer in Dutch historical literature at the University of Amsterdam, subjects to rigorous textual, paleographical and stylistic analysis before dealing with the importance of this fable for medieval men and women. He also examines medieval perceptions of original sin, paradise and the New World by looking at many examples of period art, including woodcuts, engravings and paintings. Despite such interesting points as that modern-day supermarkets' unlimited abundance and vacation packages promising paradise on earth have succeeded in making this mythical land a reality, Pleij's book will be of interest primarily to professionals in late medieval literature. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231117027
• ISBN 13: 9780231117029
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544