The Canterbury Tales given trigger warning over ‘expressions of Christian faith’
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales has been hit with a trigger warning by a leading university over “expressions of Christian faith”, it has emerged.
The University of Nottingham put the warning on the medieval collection of 24 tales which tell the story of pilgrims going to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.
A Freedom of Information request found that the university warned students that the medieval literature contains expressions of Christian faith as well as violence and mental illness.
The stories also contain explicit references to rape and anti-Semitism, but the warning made no reference to these themes, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.
The University of Nottingham has now been accused of “demeaning education” with its “ludicrous” and “weird” trigger warning.
Andrea Williams, the chief executive of Christian Concern, claimed that “without an understanding of the Christian faith there will be no way for students to access the world of Chaucer and his contemporaries”.
“From what point in history are we going to censor literary texts given most are steeped in a Christian world view?” she said. “Trigger warnings for Christian themes in literature are demeaning to the Christian faith and stifle the academic progress of our students.
“To censor expressions of the Christian faith is to erase our literary heritage. True education engages and fosters understanding, not avoidance.”
She added: “Our universities should allow students, who have chosen to study some of the greatest works in English literature, the freedom of academic thought to make up their own minds rather than planting loaded warnings about the Christian faith.”
Frank Furedi of the University of Kent said “the problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics”.
He told the Mail on Sunday: “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.”
A university spokesman told the paper that it “champions diversity”, adding: “Even those who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval world view... alienating and strange”.
It comes as an increasing number of important pieces of literature are hit with trigger warnings.
In 2022, the University of Leeds issued warnings on dozens of classic works including Tarzan and Robinson Crusoe amid fears about how content including war, death, violence and suicide might affect students.
The Telegraph contacted the university for further comment.