Posted on 01/22/2022 7:51:16 PM PST by algore
As one of the greatest works in Britain’s literary canon, Nineteen Eighty-Four sounds a chilling warning about the dangers of censorship.
Now staff at the University of Northampton have issued a trigger warning for George Orwell’s novel on the grounds that it contains ‘explicit material’ which some students may find ‘offensive and upsetting’.
The advice, revealed following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday, has infuriated critics, who say it runs contrary to the themes in the book.
Published in 1949, Orwell’s dystopian story – set in a totalitarian state which persecutes individual thinking – gave the world phrases such as ‘Big Brother’, ‘Newspeak’ and ‘thought police’.
Its plot centres on Winston Smith, a government employee who is arrested and tortured over an illicit love affair, but it also makes powerful points about what can happen to a society that doesn’t cherish academic freedoms or its own history.
Yet it is one of several literary works which have been flagged up to students at Northampton who are studying a module called Identity Under Construction. They are warned that the module ‘addresses challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language’.
In addition to Orwell’s book, academics identify several works in the module that have the potential to be ‘offensive and upsetting’ including the Samuel Beckett play Endgame, the graphic novel V For Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing The Cherry.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Later
This is as good as an endorsement of the book. Even better.
Future generations are just screwed.
But homosexual and porn books are OK in the school library.
The Snowflakes are going to have to learn to live with “offensiveness” and stuff that “upsets” their little weenies.
For something that will really trigger them, they should try reading Aesop’s Fables.
There’s nothing more upsetting to a leftist than a morality tale, even if three year olds used to be able to handle the material back in pre-post-modernist days.
Doesn’t matter to me, as long as young people READ the book.
They’ll probably recognize a lot of the ‘stuff’ in it.
That is my long time tag line…
Trigger what exactly?
Aren’t books supposed to cause reactions?
So what are they going to use for their “How To” manual now?
That’s quite the kitty cat. What do you feed it? Chipmunks and ferrets?
Zackly.
Surprised by my Packers’ surprise loss tonight. Since it was almost 11:30, I decided to watch the start of a show I almost never watch anymore, Saturday Night Live. Opening sketched mocked Laura Ingraham, Ted Cruz, Novak Djokovic, and Donald Trump. When a Democrat President just bumbled through a two hour press conference, hoping for maybe only a small Russian invasion of Ukraine, is that comedy censorship when you don’t mock him royally during your opening? Orwell, Calling Orwell, did Big Brother not allow himself to be mocked by the comedians in 1984, I can’t remember from my reading of it? Were there only government comedians in 1984 like SNL, Colbert and Kimmel?
"Yet it is one of several literary works which have been flagged up to students at Northampton who are studying a module called Identity Under Construction. They are warned that the module ‘addresses challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language’."
He was only 47 ?
Required reading in my high school back in the day.
Books that are not considered offensive now are books describing Gay Sex.
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