i understand your positions, but allow me a slippery slope, please.
we're talking about classical litterature, but if we start getting trigger warnings in there, it'll move on to contemporary litterature. especially the 70's american litterature which is filled with drug abuse, rape, and deviance to try and drive the point home that indeed things are shocking, and as tvtropes puts it "rape is a special kind of evil". i have a problem with that. oh, go ahead and put warnings on the books, i don't mind that. it could very well be useful for someone who fears spoilers, for instance. no, i have a problem with politically correct and trigger culture lording it over university life.
i've come to see the university as a critical thinking laboratory. one where we see the nitty gritty of humanity. (i'll talk about what i know, so i'll be aiming my point towards social sciences and the humanities). history is not politically correct. sociology is not politically correct. psychology is iffy on a good day, and downright problematic on bad ones (especially XIXth century psychology). currently, litterature is taking the brunt of the aggression. what's left? linguistics? the arts? (obvious bait is obvious).
studying the social sciences means studying both the best and the worst of humankind. i fear that starting to nail up everything with warnings will scare off critical thinking and possibly whitewash the fields, leaving them sterile and infertile to new ideas. lobotomies were at one point a real practice, just like the sacking of rome or constantinople were human tragedies with everything looted, raped, and burned, and not necessarily in that order. you cannot study shakespeare without keeping in mind the cultural bias of XVIth century england, one where women were not allowed on stage and young men crossdressed. culture evolves, changes at the same speed as humanity advances. i fear that by warning about the horrors of humanity, you will stifle intellectual freedom by not teaching to go against the grain. i don't want the university to become an echo chamber.
i'd sooner have an opposing viewpoint than a yes-man. at least one challenges current theories.
ok, i've indulged in my slippery slope. perhaps trigger warnings on books is a good thing, and it won't get out of hand, but allow me to be cautiously pessimistic about this.