Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey have been hit with trigger warnings by the University of Exeter because of their potentially “distressing” content.
In a move that’s been branded as “a parody” and “bonkers”, students enrolled on the Women in Homer module are told they could “encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable”. They’re also advised to seek support from campus welfare services if the poems provide too much for them. Anybody who finds Homer is “causing distress”, the university says, should “feel free to deal with it in ways that help (eg to leave the classroom, contact Wellbeing, and of course talk to the lecturer)”.
Elsewhere though, the advice – obtained by the Mail on Sunday via Freedom of Information – has been greeted with a mixture of incredulity and ridicule.
Boris Johnson, who read classics at Oxford, said that Homer provided the “foundation of Western literature”. Reacting to news of the trigger warnings, he described the policy as “bonkers”, telling the paper: “Exeter University should withdraw its absurd warnings. Are they really saying that their students are so wet, so feeble-minded and so generally namby-pamby that they can’t enjoy Homer?
“Is the faculty of Exeter University really saying that its students are the most quivering and pathetic in the entire 28 centuries of Homeric studies?”
Historian Lord Andrew Roberts argued that students shouldn’t be “wrapped in cotton wool and essentially warned against ancient but central texts of the Western canon”. Jeremy Black MBE, the author of more than 150 historical books – and himself a former Professor of History at Exeter –said the measure “can surely only be a parody”.
According to Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent: “A university that decides to put a trigger warning on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey has become morally disoriented to the point that it has lost the plot.”
Exeter’s fears about Homer’s work come amid an increasing number of canonical literary works being given trigger warnings.
In October, the University of Nottingham alerted undergraduates studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that the work contains “expressions of Christian faith”. Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland are among a collection of children’s books held by York St John University deemed worthy of a cautionary notice that readers will find “a widespread occurrence of colonialist narratives which centre white supremacy, and racist and orientalist methods of both fictional and historical storytelling”. (Happily, the university will continue to care for the collection in order to maintain “evidence of the racist marginalisation”.)
Meanwhile, it emerged last month that John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was removed from the Welsh GCSE curriculum owing to the “psychological and emotional” harm caused by its racial slurs.
A spokesperson for Exeter told the Telegraph: “The university strongly supports both academic freedom and freedom of speech, and accepts that this means students may encounter views and content that they may find uncomfortable during their studies. Academics may choose to include a content warning on specific modules if they feel some students may find some of the material challenging or distressing.”
