5 Literary Classics That Put X-Rated Movies to Shame

The Book

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories within a story about a group of bored pilgrims spinning yarns about life in the Middle Ages. Oh, and it single-handedly established English as a written language (up until this point, most works were written primarily in French or Latin). At the time, English was considered too clumsy and barbaric compared to the other Romance languages.

Photos.com
"I like large shanks and cannot speak untruth.
My fellow brothers cannot refute."

The Canterbury Tales changed this perception. Written in Middle English in the late 1300s, it presented beautiful descriptions of fair country maids and the escapades of jousting knights. So it was some of the purest, most pristine writing known to humanity, right?

The Filth

Oh, goodness no.

Let's start with "The Miller's Tale," a story of rim jobs and anal torture.

The tale involves an affair between a student named Nicholas and the married woman he is boarding with, Alison. A local parish clerk, Absalom (who is also obsessed with Alison), decides to come to her window the same night she and Nicholas are enjoying medieval boning. Absalom stands outside her house, begging for a kiss. She acquiesces and sticks her ass out the window for a smooch -- which he delivers.

Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com
"Say, did you have corn for dinner?"

Absalom can't see her butt in the dark of night, but he realizes he's been tricked into making out with her bum-hole. How does he know? Because he felt her pubic hair on his chin and realized that women don't have beards. That's in the text, by the way.

Absalom is so enraged that he grabs a flaming hot poker and returns to the window. This time, it's Nicholas who sticks his bum out the window, and Absalom shoves the poker right up there. Right. Up. There.

Photos.com
"This is actually the second worse burning sensation I've had involving my ass."

But surely the rest of Canterbury is totally PBS-period-drama-friendly, right? Well, in "The Wife of Bath's Tale," a wife talks about her five marriages from the age of 12 onward. What follows is essentially a primer on BDSM, and she is possibly the first dominatrix in literature.

The wife explains that her sexual prowess is a God-given power and that she uses it to control her husbands. Her first three husbands were old and submissive, and she would sexually torment them, teasing them in bed until they gave her large amounts of money before she would let them climax. She actually spends more time talking about the sex than she does telling the tale itself -- which, by the way, begins with a knight raping a maiden. See? Game of Thrones is just carrying on the tradition.

The Filth

Oh, and also 1,001 nights of screwball sexcapades. One character who will definitely not be receiving a Disney cartoon anytime soon is the cuckolded snoozing demon. Later in Nights, we meet a demon's wife, who cheats on her monstrous husband whenever he sleeps and wants the aforementioned king and the king's brother to diddle her. The men are so scared of the demon that they tell her they're just too damn flaccid. Unsatisfied, she says she'll wake the demon and have him eat them if they don't both ram-jam her right then and there. After this galvanizing sexual pep talk, the brothers comply, but carefully watch the demon the whole time they're porking his wife. She responds by grinning at her sleeping hubby-demon every time she has an orgasm.

Photos.com
The worst part is that she faked half of them just to be an ass.

After this menage-a-trois out of hell, the demon's wife demands their rings as tokens and reveals a purse of 98 other such rings, all from men she fucked while her husband slept a few feet away. This is proof positive that modern doctors must prescribe slumbering demons as a cure for erectile dysfunction.

Also, remember how the king was cheated on? That was actually an orgy between the queen, her handmaids, and 11 slaves, which the king watched. Look, we're not telling a king what to do when his wife is cheating on him with a sex party, but it's not exactly poor etiquette to jump out shouting "A-ha!" rather than watching the whole damn thing.

Wiki
"Well, I didn't want to be rude."

Anne Frank never assumed that anyone would read her diary. The majority of the book is absolutely focused on the Nazi occupation, but there are certain other parts where the author ponders her developing body. There are the detailed descriptions Frank gives of her own genitalia, namely exploratory passages like "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it," "I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there," and "The hole is so small you can't even put your index finger in."

Hey, she called it like she saw it.

Once the war was over, Otto Frank, Anne's father, edited the diary for publication. He kept roughly 70 percent of the original text, while removing references to sex and anecdotes about Anne's mom being a shitty parent. But the unedited version became available later, and some parents have complained to school boards about the book's sexual content. Yes, it's far more upsetting to hear a teenager frankly discuss puberty than her impending internment and genocide.

Getty Images
You know who else had a problem with certain books?

The Book

The children's series Where's Waldo? (also known as Where's Wally? in some markets) is beautiful in its simplicity. A nerd in a striped sweater is hidden in a cluttered tableau of people. The reader must find him, his nerd-girlfriend, his nerd-dog, and his nerd-wizard, or live with deep, nagging shame the rest of his days.

The Filth

As hidden as Waldo was, quite a few disturbing things were not.

OK, but that's just one mildly filthy Easter egg. It's not like there's anything else ...

Oh look, a naked clown on a pogo stick? Well, two pictures don't constitute a trend ...

Yup, that's a bunch of middle-school peeping toms looking at a topless woman in a dressing room. In the same picture we have ...

... a woman getting her dress sucked off by a vacuum cleaner.

But probably best of all, in one ancient Rome-themed edition, we have a man about to be violently mounted by a leopard while he simultaneously murders another man:

Based on an actual incident.

For more X-rated sources you wouldn't expect, check out 6 Famous Artists You Didn't Know Were Perverts and The 5 Most Depraved Sex Scenes from Important Cultural Myths.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 6 Hilarious Cases of Online Voting Contests Gone Awry.

And stop by LinkSTORM to discover which 18th century overture was actually music to freak too.

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up RIGHT NOW and pitch your first article today! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infographic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed. Are you on Google+? So are we!

Also, you know what else is sexy? Scars. Check out 5 Physical Traits That Determine if a Character Is Evil.