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Nottingham University Puts Trigger Warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – Because They Contain “Expressions of Christian Faith”

by Toby Young
13 October 2024 5:00 PM

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the 14th Century masterpiece which tell the stories of a host of characters on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, has been given a trigger warning by Nottingham University because they contained “expressions of Christian faith”. The Mail has more.

Nottingham University has now been accused of “demeaning education” for warning students about the religious elements of Chaucer’s stories – saying that anyone studying one of the most famous works in English literature would hardly have to have the Christian references pointed out.

The Mail on Sunday has obtained details of the notice issued to students studying a module called ‘Chaucer and His Contemporaries’ under Freedom of Information laws. It alerts them to incidences of violence, mental illness and expressions of Christian faith in the works of Chaucer and fellow medieval writers William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve.

The Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400, is a collection of stories about characters on a pilgrimage from London to the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.

They include the promiscuous Wife of Bath, the drunken miller and the thieving reeve, who delight and shock each other with stories containing explicit references to rape, lust and even anti-Semitism.

However, the university’s ­ warning makes no reference to the anti-Semitism or sexually explicit themes.

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said: “Warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith. The problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics.”

Historian Jeremy Black added: “Presumably, this Nottingham nonsense is a product of the need to validate courses in accordance with tick-box criteria. It is simultaneously sad, funny and a demeaning of education.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Canterbury TalesGeoffrey ChaucerNottingham UniversityTrigger Warnings

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18 Comments
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Jeff Chambers
Jeff Chambers
9 months ago

Bearing in mind that our so-called universities have willingly and enthusiastically entered the New Dark Age, this is not surprising. What we need now is a new and more appropriate name for the institutions that were once universities. Anti-universities? Lie-factories? Propaganda outfits? And incidentally, do the anti-universities issue “trigger warnings” about the Left’s Favourite Religion?

14
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
9 months ago
Reply to  Jeff Chambers

“trigger warnings” about the Left’s Favourite Religion?”

Would that be the religion of peace by any chance?

8
0
JXB
JXB
9 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Trigger warning – well any paloyourno is a palomino.

0
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
9 months ago

Give it a few more years, they will ban the Bible. Clearly it contains expressions of Jewish and Christian faith and ugly prejudice against the followers of Baal and Moloch.
Alternatively the Muslims take over and accomplish the same result.
The banning of the Bible will enjoy the full support of the Church of England bishops who will declare that due to “problematic” sections in the Bible condemning homosexuality and child sacrifice (including prenatal infanticide, i.e. abortion) it is time to put behind us the outdated views expressed in the aforementioned book.
When this happens, it will be a reversal of fortunes: we’ll probably have people from Eastern Europe smuggling Bibles into Britain.

14
0
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
9 months ago

Follow the money. Is Nottingham getting shed loads of cash from Muslim donors?

At this rate Farage and Goodwin will have an easy time taunting the elites on their values.

10
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
9 months ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

Likely. Nottingham is fast becoming a Muhammaden enclave. And, call them Muhammadens because thatis what they are. They follow a religious mafia boss and his mentally deranged teachings.

Last edited 9 months ago by Grim Ace
5
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
9 months ago

As a Christian I find this gratuitously insulting. We can’t badmouth the koran but an English University, an English University no less considers it acceptable to criticise quite contemptuously one of this country’s greatest pieces of writing. Furthermore, yet again the woketards, who should be sacked immediately for this, seem wholly ignorant of the fact that Chaucer’s audience lived and died 700 or so years ago.

Pathetic.

9
0
Jeff Chambers
Jeff Chambers
9 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Our culture, our history, and Christianity – the religion that enabled the Europeans to build the greatest civilisation in history – has to be presented as “problematic” (to use the madleft’s term), i.e. denigrated. And denigration is a prelude to abolition.

8
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
9 months ago
Reply to  Jeff Chambers

Yes, Europeans building the greatest civilisation was a problem 🙂

1
0
MajorMajor
MajorMajor
9 months ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

One day in the not so distant future Christians will be persecuted in this country.
If I’m still alive, may God give me the strength to do the right thing and take up my cross.

7
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
9 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

I share your views.

4
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
9 months ago

When will these people grow up? That goes for the students too.

7
0
JXB
JXB
9 months ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

https://x.com/fatemperor/status/1845614731979100591?s=61&t=sabWz0Cnn6yRLEhPg8n2mA

1
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
9 months ago

Academics, polticians and the media are our enemies. There must be Nuremburg type trials, one day. I hope to live long enough to witness them.

5
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
9 months ago

If you’re not a member already join Together and New Culture Forum Locals group. Find out more here: https://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/ncf-locals-form

4
0
NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
9 months ago

Almighty God places trigger warnings on Nottingham Uni, and He will pull it when He decides to enact judgment.
Obadiah 15.

1
0
varmint
varmint
9 months ago

What is the racial mixture in their University? It probably will not be mostly White Christian people attending there. We have got to the situation in the last decades now where there are so many people not White or Christian that the authorities everywhere bend over backwards to apologise for any sign that might indicate we were at one time not so very long ago a mostly White Christian country, and this is clearly making them all very uncomfortable for some reason. It is a complete capitulation to the globalism that seeks to destroy National Identities and their history

3
0
JXB
JXB
9 months ago

Given the mediocre dross entering our universities, is it likely any of them will be able to read Chaucer? Most of them can’t count to 20 with their socks on or write their own name.

2
0

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