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.”
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