| | Amazon.com: Dreaming of Cockaigne: Books: Herman Pleij,Diane Webb (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-11) |
 | | 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. |
 | | 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. |
| www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0231117027?v=glance (1113 words) |