Cockaigne
Sign in to saveAlso known as Cockayne
thumb|upright=1.2|Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Luilekkerland ("The Land of Cockaigne "), oil on panel (1567; [[Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]]
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- BrueghelLand of Cockaignedetail.jpg
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- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition
- Commons category
- Cockaigne
- P8168
- Tirpitz
- native label
- Cockaigne
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thumb|upright=1.2|Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Luilekkerland ("The Land of Cockaigne "), oil on panel (1567; [[Alte Pinakothek, Munich)]]
Cockaigne or Cockayne () is a land of plenty in medieval myth, an imaginary place of luxury and ease, comfort and pleasure, opposite to the harshness of medieval peasant life. In poems like The Land of Cockaigne, it is a land of contraries, where all the restrictions of society are defied (abbots beaten by their monks), sexual liberty is open (nuns showing their bottoms), and food is plentiful (skies that rain cheese). Cockaigne appeared frequently in Goliard verse. It represented both wish fulfillment and resentment at scarcity and Christian asceticism.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Cockaigne” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.