Demimonde's
WTF Does Polanski Have To Do With Chaucer post reminded me of one of my favorite Chaucer memories.
In my freshman year at Berserkeley, I had a hilarious professor for the Major British Writers I class. (My Major British Writers II professor was an idiotic dork, which made that class very anticlimactic after Dr. Booth's unparalleled winnage.)
We were reading the tale about Chanticleer the chicken (forget which tale that is -- Prioress?), and he made the point that while reading it you might be initially shocked when you get to the line about how he screws all of his sisters, and then catch yourself when you remember these are chickens, at which point it becomes doubly funny in a "gotcha" sort of way. Yes, he did a much better job of explaining it, so bite me.
Anyway, after making the ever-so-controversial claim that chicken incest isn't such a big deal as human incest, one of the students began vehemently arguing with him. She said she raised horses, and she DID find it shocking, because inbreeding livestock is inviting a whole host of problems. It became a rather protracted debate that the professor, obviously, wasn't really interested in having, it being sort of
completely beside the fucking point.
So from that point on, whenever Dr. Booth's interesting rambles led him to mention a horse, cow, or other farm animal, he would stop himself and say, "Oops, never mind, that's livestock. Off limits." Later on in the semester it became a one-word running gag, and at the moment a farm animal came up, he'd just exclaim "Livestock!" and change the subject. It was sort of his "Library!"
Anyway, that's why chickens are dangerous to discussions of Chaucer. Best to keep livestock out of them entirely.
You're welcome.