Professors in America and the U.K. fight back against the cancelation of Geoffrey Chaucer

Academics in both America and the United Kingdom have recently taken actions to prevent Geoffrey Chaucer, the “father of English literature,” from being labeled a rapist, racist and anti-Semite.

In late July, Cambridge University medieval and renaissance English Professor Jill Mann resigned from her position on the board of the Chaucer Review, an academic journal specializing in the work of “The Canterbury Tales” author.

The journal had published an essay called “New Feminist Approaches to Chaucer” in which authors Samantha Katz Seal and Nicole Sidhu argued it is time for feminists “to move past Chaucer” because: “He is a rapist, a racist, an anti-Semite; he speaks for a world in which the privileges of the male, the Christian, the wealthy, and the white are perceived to be an inalienable aspect of human existence.”