allusions and encyclopedic range of reference a delightful challenge to his erudition; the interpreter, seizing upon the allegorical possibilities of a beast-fable, exercises his ingenuity in demonstrating that the tale is something other than what it purports to be. But this most insidious of comic tales has ambushes prepared for both parties. Although Chaucer does not anticipate Swift's practice of inserting 'spoof' references,' the zealous commentator is easily tempted by fascination and false fire to explore byways that lead nowhere. The interpreter, on the other hand, must be perpetually on his guard in a tale that-most obviously in the discussion of Chauntecleer's dream-makes interpretation itself one of the principal targets of its satire. Again, whereas the commentator is in danger of accumulating 'huge heaps of littleness', the chief risk for the interpreter is that he will sacrifice the poem's wealth of detail in order to purchase a unique principle of meaningful organization. Chauntecleer was caught when, in full voice, he closed both his eyes; the critic will be caught in full cry if he closes only one of his: commentator and interpreter must continue to operate in harmony. The present article attempts to illustrate how our appreciation of the tale may be enhanced if we maintian such a stereoscopic view of the text: 'so moote I brouke wel myne eyen tweye!' I offer only a little fresh seasoning to the banquet of erudition and I make no claim to have discovered a definitive interpretation. The encyclopedic range of reference, the way in which so much of the syllabus of a fourteenth-century university is enclosed within the narrow and humble compass of the chicken run, suggests that, if the fable's hero represents mankind, then he is seen in particular as homo sapiens. I adopt the anachronism advisedly: there is more than a hint or two that the author of this tale was, in certain respects, a Darwinian by prolepsis. He writes as one who is tired of hearing the medieval commonplace that Man (animal rationale) possesses intelligence in common with the angels and that his reason is what distinguishes him from the beasts. The writer's instinctive reaction to such a platitude is to let a beast stand for his intellectual: to present Man with 'his Animal Faculties perpetually a-cock-Horse and