One of the great classics of Western literature, Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’, which was written in the Middle Ages, has been hit with a ‘trigger warning’ by a leading university over “expressions of Christian faith”.

The University of Nottingham put the warning on the collection of 24 tales which tell the story of pilgrims going to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.

A Freedom of Information request found that the university warned students that the stories contains expressions of Christian faith as well as violence and mental illness.

The stories also contain explicit references to rape and anti-Semitism, but the warning made no reference to these themes, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.

The University of Nottingham has now been accused of “demeaning education” with its “ludicrous” and “weird” trigger warning.