Bibliofile

Studying the classics can have its embarrassing moments, as Eng lit students from Delhi University will vouch. But it’s mostly the teachers who are blushing, to their students’ glee. While the sections from Chaucer’s ribald Tales included in the undergrad syllabus carefully skirt the raunchiest bits, reading aloud Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market with its lesbian overtones is not something prudish lecturers look forward to. Likewise Ismat Chugtai’s The Quilt, and even Aristophanes’ LysisTrata about the wives who withheld sex to punish their men.