Madam, - The near silence that has greeted Prof Donnchadh Ó Corráin's eloquent denunciation of the decline of medieval studies in our great universities (May 3rd) ought to occasion no great surprise among your readers, for it is the natural confirmation of the condition that he describes. Thus when Chaucer's hypocritical Pardoner is exposed by the Host he is reduced to silence: "This Pardoner answerde not a word;/ So wrooth he was, no word ne wolde he seye".
If any Irish person wants to know the meaning of philistinism, let him or her walk through the once hallowed grounds (as I knew them in 1968) of Trinity College. We may no longer have a Professor of Medieval History in the great tradition of Curtis, Otway-Ruthven and Lydon, but we have vandalised Thomas Burgh's magnificient Old Library (1712-1732) in order to sell glimpses of the Book of Kells to throngs of tourists.
We have given up the love of books, for the love of cars (lorries, vans and motorbikes) which now pollute and litter Parliament Square and New Square. We are now a home for skate-boarders and heroin addicts. Our college ball is now, for many, a drunken orgy.
This is a great plea not only for the love of learning, but for the love of Ireland, that once great land of saints and scholars. - Yours, etc.,
GERALD MORGAN, FTCD, Trinity College, Dublin 2.