Herman Pleij lectures on Dutch historical literature at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of the Dutch best-seller Het Gilde van de Blauwe Schuit(The guild of the blue barge), an account of the rituals surrounding the celebration of Carnival in the Middle Ages, and the critically acclaimed book De sneeuwpoppen van 1511(The snowmen of 1511), a study of the rise of urban culture and middle-class morality in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages. His last book, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, was published by Columbia in 2001.Diane Webb, a professional musician and translator, lives in the Netherlands and Italy. She specializes in the translation of… historical and art-historical literature.