Culture University Puts Trigger Warning on Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ Over ‘Expressions of Christian Faith’ - Notably, the university’s warning does not mention the anti-Semitic or sexually explicit elements in the work.

Circa 1390, the author of 'The Canterbury Tales,' Geoffrey Chaucer. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Nottingham University in England has ignited a debate after issuing a trigger warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s renowned work, “The Canterbury Tales.”

The warning informs students of the religious content within the text, highlighting expressions of Christian faith, which has led to accusations of “demeaning education,” the Daily Mail reports.

Critics argue that students studying such a pivotal piece of English literature should expect Christian themes, given the medieval context. The warning, detailed in a notice obtained under Freedom of Information laws, also points out instances of violence and mental illness in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries, including William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve.

Composed between 1387 and 1400, “The Canterbury Tales” narrates the adventures of various characters on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral from London, with tales featuring figures such as the Wife of Bath, the miller, and the reeve, all of whom share stories that touch on sensitive topics such as rape, lust, and anti-Semitism.

Notably, the university’s warning does not mention the anti-Semitic or sexually explicit elements.

An emeritus sociology professor at the University of Kent, Frank Furedi, criticized the warning, stating, “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,” the Mail reported.

Historian Jeremy Black described the warning as such: “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.”

A representative of the university defended the decision, emphasizing its commitment to diversity and noting that even practicing Christians might find certain aspects of the medieval worldview “alienating and strange.”

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[tehpope]

but Expressions of other faiths is a-okay. Especially Islamic.

 

[Hunter Hearst Helmsley]

Not about the hot poker up the ass or whatever it was?

 

[I Hate The Disabled]

TPTB aversion and outright hatred of Christianity just proves that Christianity is the truth, and that Christ is King.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

Reading is hard anyway, just sit in bed and watch Buzz Lightyear marry his Disney-branded dildo on your iPhone.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

TPTB aversion and outright hatred of Christianity just proves that Christianity is the truth, and that Christ is King.

It's just fashionable out-group preference and faggy self-hatred.

If Zoroastrianism were the dominant historical religion of colonial Europe, they'd be talking shit about Ahura Mazda.

 

[Otterly]

>set literally on a pilgrimage
>trigger warning for expressions of Christian faith.
I’m at the point now where trigger warnings should literally trigger a giant springy chair that tips the person doing them into a pit of spikes, Austin Powers style.
Students unable to cope with expressions of Christian religion in a key work of literature based around a pilgrimage shouldn’t be at university, they should be in a padded cell, or a coal mine until they learn some resilience.

How convenient for the powers that be to have a whole generation convinced that words and ideas can physically hurt them. To be so upset by words and ideas that they are unable to confront them - no danger of forming any ideas of their own through exposure and synthesis! Just perfect little attack dogs trained to cry and attack the source of the scary ideas .

 

[Nero Fiddled]

Makes me wonder how these delicate little students would cope if they encountered a devastating disaster, like not being able to find vegan sausages or having no heating for an afternoon.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

>set literally on a pilgrimage
>trigger warning for expressions of Christian faith.
I’m at the point now where trigger warnings should literally trigger a giant springy chair that tips the person doing them into a pit of spikes, Austin Powers style.
Students unable to cope with expressions of Christian religion in a key work of literature based around a pilgrimage shouldn’t be at university, they should be in a padded cell, or a coal mine until they learn some resilience.

How convenient for the powers that be to have a whole generation convinced that words and ideas can physically hurt them. To be so upset by words and ideas that they are unable to confront them - no danger of forming any ideas of their own through exposure and synthesis! Just perfect little attack dogs trained to cry and attack the source of the scary ideas .

Especially in the fucking Canterbury Tales. That’s something you’ll absorb through osmosis if you ever read Christian writings post 19th century. It’s as influential as Paradise Lost.

 

[sixuglymidgets]

>set literally on a pilgrimage
>trigger warning for expressions of Christian faith.
I’m at the point now where trigger warnings should literally trigger a giant springy chair that tips the person doing them into a pit of spikes, Austin Powers style.
Students unable to cope with expressions of Christian religion in a key work of literature based around a pilgrimage shouldn’t be at university, they should be in a padded cell, or a coal mine until they learn some resilience.

How convenient for the powers that be to have a whole generation convinced that words and ideas can physically hurt them. To be so upset by words and ideas that they are unable to confront them - no danger of forming any ideas of their own through exposure and synthesis! Just perfect little attack dogs trained to cry and attack the source of the scary ideas .

These people are adult infants

 

[JosephStalin]

Yet one more sign of a once-great country going straight down the toilet.

 

[Safir]

How convenient for the powers that be to have a whole generation convinced that words and ideas can physically hurt them. To be so upset by words and ideas that they are unable to confront them - no danger of forming any ideas of their own through exposure and synthesis!

I have to disagree somewhat here.

First, a small correction: it is generally believed that words and ideas do not physically hurt wokes by themselves but hurt them by reminding of Past Trauma.
I do believe words can physically hurt normal people, anyone who disagrees is welcome to go through zoosadism threads for exposure and synthesis.

My disagreement, below, does not concern itself with Past Trauma and is fully clown world compatible.

Content warnings on consoomer products are good. Facts about the world, if they don't impact you directly, are also consoomer products of sorts. Not all knowledge is good. There's no virtue in reading about rapemurder to "form any ideas of one's own" (hopefully that rape and murder are bad). My parents' lives, for example, won't be improved by knowing about Furuta Junko or Sylvia Likens. And these are real events that happened, not fiction someone thought up.

University students aren't usually reading to consoom and form an opinion (but even consoomer products are offered "for your enjoyment"), they're often reading to honor the works and authors that are regarded as classics. They will have to read literary criticism that slobbers all over these works. And not just Chaucer, remember that "faggotology" is now a scientific discipline and actually has been one for some time (though not in name). Most importantly, they'll be wasting their time. "I'm gonna hate this book.... yep, I hated it."

I risk doxxxxxxxing myself here a bit because I've told that story a lot, so I'll try to be vague. In middle school, I really hated a piece of mandatory reading that's regarded as an absolute masterpiece. We were told again and again how a specific character in it displayed exemplary behavior that women especially should follow. But that spring, in a preface for collection of works by that author, I found, among effusive praise, a critical essay that was the greatest negative review of all time, written in perfect modern language. I half expected him to quote the Terminator or something. I wanted to write the guy fanmail, but it turned out I was late by about 150 years.

Maybe they'll "disagree". Maybe they'll really commit to disagreeing, as I once did (by proxy, I was a shitty coward at school and only really started talking back when my boyfriend backed me -- read all about this in my thread! sorry, mouse battery died, keyboardposting, no link). Maybe they'll disagree so hard they'll compile a list of every boy beatniks raped, or every crime committed by the degenerate coomer Tolstoy against his poor young wife. But no one goes to study literature to count raped boys or wife beatings, they do it because (they think) they love literature.

There should be more content warnings, not fewer. Wokes (but also contrarians) are clearly unsuited for English literature. Maybe they would prefer foreign literature, where the anthrolopogical aspect would make them free to indulge in sweet cultural imperialism. Maybe they shouldn't be in a university at all.

That said, "TRIGGER warnings", the implication that the world needs to be made safe for the Traumatized, can get fucked.

 

[Caesare]

It's always amusing to read about "trigger warnings" aimed at adults. Pathetic and embarrassing, but amusing.

 

[el bandito loco]

they going to put one on Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost too? It's European and not from the last 100 years of course there is portrayal of Christianity

 

[KiwiFuzz2]

Powerlevel but there was a trigger warning on an episode of Mad Men the other night because Roger wears blackface in a scene.

If you've gotten three seasons in and the sight of a man with obviously antiquated sensibilities wearing blackface is what makes you stop watching it, fuck you, you're a fag.

And sometimes it's a spoiler. Looking at you, Reservation Dogs.

 

[Sneed's Feed n Seed]

TPTB aversion and outright hatred of Christianity just proves that Christianity is the truth, and that Christ is King.

Indeed, evil being so clearly visible has done more to make me question my agnosticism than any philosophical or astronomical argument ever could.

 

[BulkForceFive]

TBH the part where the pilgrims meet a man building a steam-powered Jew-raping machine was a little bit... excessive. I stopped after about page ten of the extremely-detailed description of how it worked.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Powerlevel but there was a trigger warning on an episode of Mad Men the other night because Roger wears blackface in a scene.

If you've gotten three seasons in and the sight of a man with obviously antiquated sensibilities wearing blackface is what makes you stop watching it, fuck you, you're a fag.

And sometimes it's a spoiler. Looking at you, Reservation Dogs.

IIRC it was either a disclaimer or the episode being banned; Matt Weiner was open that streaming sites were threatening to yank the episode (which would make storylines fall apart/not make sense if the series viewed without the episode since it features multiple key plot moments in it) and had to beg them to just put a disclaimer on it instead.

 

[Hazel Motes]

The one time at university where I saw a trigger warning was for Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, a tragedy more famous for its rape scene than its inherent literary qualities. When introducing the warning, the professor used pictures of Roy Rogers' golden white beauty, Trigger, which seems to me to imply an uncertainty about what he was doing. I'm sure he would disagree, but people often lie themselves when their salary is at stake.

Later, I was forced to remove the word 'nigger' from my essay about Flannery O'Connor's 'The Artificial Nigger'. Ironic as O'Connor's story is about how we elevate words and ideas against reality.

 

[AssignedEva]

I vaguely suspected that this was because it was a required module in the English Literature/English Language undergraduate degree. There'll be certain texts everyone must study that are non-negotiable, because they lay the framework for understanding other texts. For example, Nottingham's "Beginnings of English" module includes Beowulf, The Wanderer and The Dream of the Rood as mandatory texts because they are foundational to the English-language literary canon and have influenced later texts (which in turn influenced later texts themselves), and given they're written in Old English help expand undergrads understanding of the English language's development (which can assist with interpreting other texts).

In that scenario I could almost understand it - if you've got to wrangle a bunch of students who only really wanted to study feminist interpretations of African postcolonial literature post 1990, and they're going to throw a strop because they've got to read "some dead old white guy", then slapping some trigger warnings on some books to shut them up does make a certain amount of sense. But this Chaucer module ("Chaucer and his contemporaries") is a fully optional module. Maybe it's to try and avoid tantrums from people who end up on that module because the other modules were oversubscribed.