Why Chaucer is still a tale for our times: As woke academics banish the famed poet from a 'decolonised' syllabus, a top historian says the writer's stories of love, lust and greed are as relevant today as they were seven centuries ago

The poet W.H. Auden said that to understand your own country, you ought to have lived in at least two others.

As a historian, I've taken a different tack: to show readers what life was like for people living in the 14th century; in Elizabethan England; during the Restoration of 1660; and the Regency some 160 years later.

That way, I believe, we might be able to see our own lives and times in a different and revealing light.

When I was researching my 'guide' to medieval England, no writer brought to life that period as richly and vividly as Geoffrey Chaucer, father of English literature and the greatest poet of the Middle Ages.

Which is why I read with such dismay that a British university is now proposing to stop teaching Chaucer and his great medieval contemporaries to English literature students — indeed, to stop teaching all literature before 1500AD — in favour of modules on race and sexuality in a new, 'decolonised' curriculum.

I read with such dismay that a British university is now proposing to stop teaching Chaucer and his great medieval contemporaries to English literature students — indeed, to stop teaching all literature before 1500AD — in favour of modules on race and sexuality in a new, 'decolonised' curriculum

If this goes ahead, out will go Chaucer's magnificent Canterbury Tales, along with the epic poem Beowulf, Viking sagas and texts covering the legend of King Arthur.

They will be replaced with a 'selection of employability modules' and a 'chronological literary history', as outlined by the University of Leicester's management.

Thank goodness that Shakespeare — born in 1564 — still makes the cut!

I find these proposals not only depressing but profoundly wrong — as well as incredibly short-sighted and counter-productive.

For no one understood both his own era and the human condition better than Geoffrey Chaucer.

His endlessly fertile imagination held up a light to his society — and, as anyone who reads him now discovers, it can still do the same today.

Chaucer — who led a fascinating life as MP, courtier, diplomat and civil servant — set in motion through his poetry a brilliant tradition.

If this goes ahead, out will go Chaucer's magnificent Canterbury Tales, along with the epic poem Beowulf (pictured: first folio of epic poem), Viking sagas and texts covering the legend of King Arthur

Unlike most educated people, he wrote not in Latin or French, but proudly in English: the language spoken by ordinary people.

In doing so, he captured the voices of characters who, while six centuries old, even now leap vividly from the page.

The Canterbury Tales, his greatest work, describes a group of pilgrims, of all social classes, who are travelling to the Kent town together and who tell stories to pass the time.

The best storyteller, they agree, will win a prize at the end.

These men and women may be pilgrims, but as Chaucer shows us, they are as much interested in the earthly as the celestial.

There's scandalous extra-marital sex (including, at one point, up a tree), prostitution (a monk is the procurer), scatology and other shocking vulgarity — but there's plenty of nuance, too.

In The Knight's Tale, two great men, heroes of their time, are drawn into a violent duel over a woman — a shared passion as old as humanity. Quite simply, all human life is here — and it transcends time. What is that if not 'diversity'?

Chaucer, the Father of English Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342 - 1400) ranks alongside William Shakespeare as one the most important poets of the English language.

His masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, is considered one of the first works of modern English, marking a shift from the Old English which preceded the Middle Ages.

For this reason he is described as 'the first finder of our language.' 

The Canterbury Tales was hugely popular in Medieval England because it was one of the few works which was written in English rather than French - the language of the ruling classes.

Chaucer's poem follows a group of pilgrims on their way from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at the cathedral.

The pilgrims, including Chaucer himself, have a story-telling contest on their way to Canterbury and their 24 stories form the basis of the narrative. 

The enduring popularity of the work is testament to the humour - often bawdy, the characters and the vivid descriptions of the various social groups from knights to cooks.

Pilgrims tell tales of varying tones, some are pious and witty, others are vulgar and comic.  

Chaucer originally planned to write more than a hundred tales but only completed 24.

In surviving copies the stories appear in various orders with the Hengwrt manuscript, held in the National Library of Wales, considered to be the most accurate.

Chaucer was born in London, his father was a wine maker as per family tradition. 

In addition to his literature, Chaucer contributed to society as a courtier, diplomat and civil servant and was the trusted aide of three successive kings: Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. 

In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Chaucer among the greatest Western writers of all time.  

Such is the respect for the writer, he was first person to be buried in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. 

The unforgettable Wife of Bath holds her own among the bickering pilgrims and, insisting loudly on her independence, refuses to play along with the sexist customs of her society.

Like Dickens, Chaucer was a genius who could look at the people around him and capture their essence in a few short words.

The vivid historical details are compelling. From his Shipman's Tale I learnt how high-ranking guests would tip their host's lowliest servant.

From his Reeve's Tale, I learnt even a mean-spirited miller would offer penniless students a bed for the night if they had nowhere else to go — even though it meant them sharing a room with the miller and his family.

But Chaucer also explores the timeless passions and foibles of men and women. How so? Well, those ungrateful students in The Reeve's Tale go on to seduce the miller's wife and daughter.

In The Knight's Tale, two great men, heroes of their time, are drawn into a violent duel over a woman — a shared passion as old as humanity.

Quite simply, all human life is here — and it transcends time. What is that if not 'diversity'?

Too many cultural commentators and young people — and university departments — seem to think diversity is a new phenomenon. But we've been diversifying since the dawn of time.

And what about the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf which has also fallen foul of the 'decolonists'. Centuries before the Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones caught our imagination, Beowulf explored the same bloody territory — and in far richer fashion.

Now, this world of wonder for literature students is to be abolished and replaced with contemporary 'social' concerns. It is deeply and fatally misguided.

How can we deny our undergraduates the opportunity to study this beautiful, enriching, funny, poignant — and often very rude — literary heritage, and insist modern societal controversies are more important?

I am all for taking a fresh look at the way English literature is taught, and I wholly endorse widening the 'canon' so that more writers from BAME backgrounds are taught — not to mention more women authors.

But I cannot shake off the feeling that this latest announcement is a poorly thought-out attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of a generation raised on modern and often febrile debates over issues such as race and gender.

Why else would the staff of Leicester's English department have been told that 'students expect' modules to be chosen not for their history, their significance or how much thought and feeling they might provoke — but how 'diverse' they are?

Is it really up to undergraduates to dictate academic syllabuses?

Isn't the point of university that you learn something new — not have your prejudices, and we all have those, confirmed? 

But I cannot shake off the feeling that this latest announcement is a poorly thought-out attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of a generation raised on modern and often febrile debates over issues such as race and gender. Pictured: The University of Leicester

Little wonder that there is now real panic in academia — from the dreaming spires to the red-bricks — as dons fear being dragooned into introducing courses that conform ever more closely to modern preferences.

Chaucer is just the latest victim. From race to gender and sexuality, we are increasingly failing to understand or even study the beliefs and attitudes of the past, however much we might disagree with them today.

Instead, ideas, people and even history itself are being 'cancelled', banned from even being discussed as if they never existed at all.

The truth is that it is only by embracing our literary heritage that we can see how much our human nature has in fact stayed much the same — from Beowulf to Harry Potter.

Our opinions on individual social issues might shift: the Regency, for example, was more drunken than the Victorian age that followed it, and some TV sitcoms from the 1970s would never be aired today.

But all human beings have loved, felt anger, jealousy, greed and fear, bickered with their families, suffered loss and wanted safety, health and prosperity for their children.

Chaucer underlines all this as well as anyone else — often as the first expressing it in written English.

Universities need to learn a lesson from history. Looking at society purely in the present moment is not enough.

You need to go back and hear the voices of the past. Though they may be very different from ours, they still have much to teach us.

Ian Mortimer is the author of the Time Traveller's Guides.

Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English

At 3,000 lines long, Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English - the language of England before the Norman Conquest.

It was written between 975 and 1025 and tells the story of a Scandinavian hero called Beowulf from Geatland.

He comes to the aid of Hrothgar, King of the Danes, whose warriors are besieged by the monster Grendel. 

Before setting out to defeat Grendel, Beowulf feasts lavishly with the Danes in their great mead-hall.

But one of their number mocks Beowulf, saying that he is not worthy of his reputation. The hero replies boastfully about his past achievements.

Later that night, Grendel arrives to terrorise the banquet. 

Beowulf fights him off unarmed and rips off one of the monster's arms.

Grendel runs away back to his swamp to die and his arm is hung up in the great hall as a trophy.

Later Grendel's mother, a terrifying swamp hag, attacks the mead hall and murders one of the Danish king's senior officers before fleeing.

Beowulf leads a party to her swamp and dives into the water to kill her with his sword.

He returns home to the Geats and gives his queen Grendel's mother's severed head as a prize.

Later, when Beowulf is an old man, a thief disturbs a barrow where a dragon is guarding treasure.

The dragon unleashes fiery terror on the Geats and Beowulf goes to defeat the beast.

He is able to conquer the dragon but is mortally wounded in the encounter.

The Geats fear their kingdom will be overrun by their enemies after Beowulf is dead.

After his death, his body is burned on a massive funeral pyre and the Geats erect a tower in his memory.