Nottingham University issues trigger warning for 'Christian expression' in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer Taken from The Regimen of Princes (British Library/Robana/REX)
Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer Taken from The Regimen of Princes (British Library/Robana/REX)

Students studying a module on Geoffrey Chaucer at the University of Nottingham have been issued a trigger warning for ‘expressions of Christian faith’ in his famous Canterbury Tales.

The warning is provided to students studying the Chaucer and His Contemporaries module, according to a report in the Mail obtained under Freedom of Information laws.

The university explained that the warning was introduced due to the text's depiction of Christianity from a 14th-century perspective and its historical context.

“Even those who are practising Christians will find aspects of the late-medieval worldview... alienating and strange,” a spokesperson for the University of Nottingham said in a statement.

The Canterbury Tales consists of 24 short stories written between 1387 to 1400, the year that Chaucer died. It is considered an unfinished work.

The tales are framed as a storytelling contest between pilgrims, who entertain themselves while travelling from London to the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.

It is regarded a groundbreaking piece of literature in English, which was not the dominant language for written texts at the time.

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 are bound to be a lot of expressions of faith. The problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics.”

While some of the stories contain sexual undertones and references to antisemitism this is not mentioned in the trigger warning.

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.”

The Standard has contacted the University of Nottingham for a response.