Dreaming of Cockaigne

"Imagine a dreamland on earth where roasted pigs toddle about with knives in their backs to make carving easy; where grilled geese fly directly into one's open mouth; where cooked fish jump out of the water at one's feet. The weather is always temperate, the wine flows freely, sex is readily available, and all stay forever young.". "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 to counter the suffering and frustration of daily existence and to quell anxieties over an ever-more-exclusive heavenly afterlife.". "Illustrated with artwork from the Middle Ages, Hermen Pleij's Dreaming of Cockaigne is an account of this "lost paradise" and the world that brought it to life. Pleij takes three important texts as his starting point for an inspired sketch of the panorama of ideas, dreams, popular religion, and literary and artistic creation present in the late Middle Ages. What emerges is a finely differentiated picture of the era, formed and fitted with details from across Europe and from Asia and America, as well."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fantasy, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.