Review of Dreaming of Cockaigne: medieval fantasies of the perfect life by Herman Pleij. Cockaigne “… is the name that people in the middle ages gave to an imagined land filled with all the things that their own lives lacked.

It is the focus of literature in many of the languages of medieval Europe; it is also the subject of a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, part of which is reproduced on the cover of Pleij’s book. Three men lie beneath a tree, one of them fast asleep, the second stretched out on his side and the third gazing beatifically into the air. Round him parade such objects as a pig with a knife in its back and an egg on legs, heading straight for the dreamer. This may have nothing to do with drugs, but the bizarreness of Bruegel’s painting seems easily worthy of them.

” Guardian UK