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• Title: England, Colonialism, And 'the Land of Cokaygne' (1) (Essays) (Critical Essay)
• Author : Utopian Studies
• Release Date : January 01, 2004
• Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 200 KB

Description

"THE LAND OF COKAYGNE" is one of those rare literary texts that are often anthologized yet rarely criticized. The absence of critical commentary may be explained by the strangeness of the early fourteenth-century poem's utopian depiction of an abbey of monks run amok. The poem can be divided into four parts. The first begins by comparing the westerly Cokaygne to the easterly Christian paradise. Cokaygne is found to be preferable because it is a social and more human space than the lonely land of Enoch and Elias. The poet goes on, in the second part, to describe the details of the land and its abbey. As is typical in depictions of the Land of Plenty, the setting is described mainly in the negative. In this utopia, there is neither night, strife, death, blindness, wrath, lack, bad weather, fleas, harmful animals (such as serpents, wolves, or foxes), nor animals that require labor (such as cattle, sheep, swine, goats, or horses). What is in Cokaygne are the typical four rivers of oil, milk, honey, and wine, a tree composed of expensive and exotic spices, four wells spewing various healing liquids and lined with gold and jewels, fowl that fly ready-roasted, song birds, fruit, beauty, solace, brotherhood, and, of course, the abbey full of white and gray flying monks, and, nearby, the nuns. The abbey is built from rich foods such as flesh and fish, with pie walls, cake shingles, and sausage nails, yet the cloister is a much more solid structure with pillars of crystal, jasper, and coral. The windows are made of glass, but during prayers, the glass turns miraculously into crystal to let in more light. Thus far, the poem appears to be a somewhat typical depiction of a Land of Plenty. However, with the shift from pure description to narrative action in the third section, the poem becomes much more strange. Here, we find out that these monks fly and enjoy leaving the monastery to play outside its boundaries. The abbot, who remains behind, attempts to call his monks for evensong, but finds them reluctant to return. Unperturbed, he recalls his charges by grabbing the nearest girl, bending her over, and slapping her "white toute" as if it were a drum (line 136). (2) This drumming attracts the monks' attention, and they return eager to take part in the girl's humiliation. That this easy prey tempts the monks home is not surprising, since what the monks appear to be after in their flying escapades are the nuns of the abbey next door. The poet tells us that on a hot summer's day, the nuns, skinny-dipping in a near-by river, are attacked, carried away, and sexually assaulted by the monks. These raids seem to be a common practice. We are told that the monk who can set his hood right can have twelve "wives" a year (170). Finally, in the fourth section, the poet gives instructions on how to reach this utopia. He declares that to gain entry into this space, his audience must do seven years' penance working in swine's "dritte" up to the chin (179).

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