Land of plenty

The book, poetically titled Dream of the Land of Plenty, deals with the issue of fantasy imaginings of late medieval people, intellectuals, of nobles, of the townspeople and ordinary peasants, about the world, in which there is abundance and excess, about the world of eternal youth, where people don't age and nothing hurts. Its central theme is an upside-down world in which everything takes the form of a perfect opposite. Instead of hunger, roasted pigs and grilled geese fly straight into your mouth, beer and wine flow in the streams, and boiled fish jump straight onto your plate. Herman Pleij's book can be read as a counterpoint to Johan Huizinga's famous Autumn of the Middle Ages. If Huizinga's culture is dominated by the courtly, Burgundian culture with its jinotai, then Pleija's culture is an earthy folk culture where everything is allowed and where people indulge in dreams mainly to get over the daily hardships.