You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
A 270-year-old erotic novel has been dropped from an 18th-century literature course syllabus for fear of offending students, The Times of London reported. Judith Hawley, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the book, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, was dropped after consultation with students. Fanny Hill, which was written by John Cleland and published in 1748, is considered to be the first erotic novel written in English.
“In the 1980s I both protested against the opening of a sex shop in Cambridge and taught Fanny Hill,” Hawley said during an interview with the BBC's Radio 4. “Nowadays I’d be afraid of causing offense to my students, both that I can understand why a senior academic imposing a pornographic text on the students would come across as being objectionable but also that the students would kind of slap me with a trigger warning in a way that I now kind of self-censor myself.”
According to The Times, the reading list for the course now comes with a trigger warning stating that Restoration and 18th-century texts “sometimes reflect the unpleasant prejudices of their time, just as they sometimes work to complicate or challenge those attitudes. Racism, sexual violence and self-harm were part of society then, as in different ways they are now.”
“It is important not to exaggerate claims that students are stifling free speech on campus,” said Hawley, who also reported hearing concerns from students about depictions of violence in other texts, including Shakespeare's King Lear. “We hope we have struck a balance between encouraging discussion of difficult issues without making life difficult for students who might feel coerced by academics.”
