Cockaigne - in The Arts

In The Arts

• In Carlo Collodi's children's tale Le Avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio), Pinocchio travels to The Country of Playthings, described in the original Italian as una vera cuccagna - a real Cockaigne.
• Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis (I am the Abbot of Cockaigne) is one of the drinking songs (Carmina potatoria) found in the 13th century manuscript of Songs from Benediktbeuern, better known for its inclusion in Carl Orff's secular cantata, Carmina Burana.
• Cockaigne was depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in The Land of Cockaigne (1567, above).
• The poem, The Land of Cokaygne, appears in BL Harley MS 913, ff. 3r-63v (The Kildare Poems, #1); modern English translation.
• The book, Dreaming of Cockaigne, by Herman Pleij (Columbia University Press, 2001) offers the most complete modern collection of information on the topic.
• The musical play, The Golden Dream, by Joe Syiek tells the story of oppressed peasants who yearn for, attain and ultimately lose their ideal of Cockaigne.
• The album Land of Cockayne by Soft Machine, 1981.
• Cockaigne is the name of the kingdom which Princess Narda in the comic strip Mandrake the Magician comes from.
• Cockaigne (In London Town) is a concert overture composed by Edward Elgar in 1901.
• "Bruegel in the Land of Cockaigne" is the heading of the second chapter of T. J. Clark's 2002 Tanner Lectures on Human Values "Painting at Ground Level".
• In the popular cookbook The Joy of Cooking, the author's favorite recipes include "Cockaigne" in the name, (e.g., "Fruit Cake Cockaigne"), explained in the foreword to the 1975 edition as after the name of the Becker country home in Anderson Township, near Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Cockaigne is the name of a small Australian record label, run by musicians Dave Graney and Clare Moore.
• "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a song about a hobo's idea of paradise - a modern version of the medieval concept of Cockaigne.
• British folk band Norcsalordie recorded a song about Cockaigne, "Goodbye Cockaigne" as the final track on their debut album "Post to Pillar".
• In Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Salvatore's escape from his parents home "assumed the aspect of the land of Cockaigne." Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose", Warner Books 1986, page 220
• In Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, Cockaigne is evoked in a passage describing an ice-tipped mountain. "...an exquisite eruption in a land of Cockaigne." Umberto Eco, "The Island of the Day Before", Penguin Books 1996, page 64
• In Robert Penn Warren's "World Enough and Time" - historical novel about the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy - Maria Jordan refers to her home state (Virginia) as the Land of Cockayne. Robert Penn Warren, "World Enough and Time, 1950, page 48
• In Donald E. Westlake's 1966 crime novel The Handle, the protagonist, a professional thief named Parker, mounts a heist against a casino on an island dubbed "Cockaigne" off the coast of Texas, so named by its owner in reference to the legend.
• The painting, Cockaigne, is a painting by Vincent Desiderio done in 2003
• In Raymond Roussel's Impressions of Africa, The sculptor Fuxier throws blue pastilles into a river to produce images for his audience. The last of the images took the appearance of one half of a clock-face, which Fuxier described as "The wind-clock in the land of Cockaigne." Raymond Roussel, "Impressions of Africa", Calderand Boyars Ltd 1966, page 698
• The Cockaigne ski resort, now closed due to a 2011 fire, was located on the Chautauqua Ridge in the ski country belt in Cherry Creek, New York.
• The novel Candide by Voltaire has a section where Candide travels to the "land of plenty", El Dorado, where the people live an extravagant life.
• Cockaigne is one of the magic lands visited in Erich Kästner's 1931 novel The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas.
• In Lawrence Durrell's 1982 novel, "Constance", part of his Avignon Quintet, there is reference to a painter called Clement who paints an old smoky masterpiece, a sort of Paradise Regained painting, called "Cockayne".
• In Lauren Groff's 2012 novel "Arcadia," Cockaigne Day is a summer holiday celebrated by the residents of Arcadia, a commune in upstate New York.
• In Maastricht the country of Cokayne is created a few times throughout the year. These student-driven events bring international artists to Maastricht and thus contribute to the Agenda of Maastricht as the Cultural Capital of Europe 2018.