Free Republic

Leicester University has denied it is dropping literary giant Geoffrey Chaucer for being 'too white' after proposing replacement modules focused on race and gender. Plans have emerged to shelve The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf - two of the most important works in English literature - in favour of a 'decolonised' curriculum. The English faculty has been told that the foundational texts could be replaced by more popular works - but Leicester said this wasn't down to their 'whiteness.' Dr Christine Rauer, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, told MailOnline: 'It's hard to see why race, ethnicity, sexuality and...

Removing time-tested classics and assigning easy fiction with leftist themes fails in cultivating any love of reading in the students that need it most.Burbank Unified School District in California recently made headlines with its decision to ban the classic novels “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Of Mice and Men,” “The Cay, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” District leaders apparently responded to several complaints from parents who took issue with the purported racism of the books as well as incidents of white students taunting their nonwhite peers with racist language from their assigned reading. Yet,...

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Thomas Poole, September 24, 1796: "My dear, very dear Poole …Mrs Coleridge was delivered on Monday, September 19th, 1796, half past two in the Morning, of a SON…When I first saw the Child, I did not feel that thrill & overflowing of affection which I expected—I looked on it with a melancholy gaze—my mind was intensely conntemplative & my heart only sad.—But when two hours after, I saw it at the bosom of it’s Mother; on her arm; and her eye tearful & watching it’s little features, then I was thrilled & melted, & gave...

Three mysterious signatures on pages of parchment bound in leather and kept under lock and key may prove the theory that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who spent his “lost years” in Italy. An exhibition at the Venerable English College, the seminary in Rome for English Catholic priests, has revealed cryptic names in its guest books for visiting pilgrims, suggesting that the playwright sought refuge there. “Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis” signed the book in 1585, while “Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis” arrived in 1589. According to Father Andrew Headon, vice-rector of the college and organiser of the exhibition, the names can be...