The Land of Cockaigne: The Heresy of Plenty and the Paradise That Tests by Satiety
Every paradise mankind has imagined asks something of its candidates—faith, virtue, heroism, death. One alone asks nothing, and the medieval world, which invented it, knew exactly what it was doing. The Land of Cockaigne — Cocagne to the French who named it first in the thirteenth century, Cokaygne to the English, Schlaraffenland , the land of lazy apes, to the Germans—is the paradise of appetite : a country where the houses are roofed with pies and walled with sausage; where roasted geese fly directly onto the plate and grilled larks fall into the open mouth; where a roast pig trots about with a carving knife thoughtfully lodged in its back; where the rivers run wine, the fences are woven of sausages, cheese falls like hail, and the shops give their goods away and pay the customer for taking them. It rains custard. Sleep is salaried—he who sleeps longest earns most; work is a crime punishable by banishment; whoever says an honest day's labor is a good thing is thrown out of th...