Circular view path : would dispatch back to the current handler URL again. Check your ViewResolver setup - spring

Question

I am learning Spring Boot and working through lessons. Pardon my newbieness. I have searched for this error, and tried suggestions I've found, which havent worked for me, so am posting the question. I hope someone can help me please.
This is a really simple application at the moment, I'm just trying to bring up courses.html when I use http://localhost:8080/ or http://localhost:8080/courses
I have a courses.html file located in the folder src/main/resources/templates
This is the resultant error:
2018-06-04 15:51:59.928 ERROR 3156 --- [nio-8080-exec-5] o.a.c.c.C.[.[.[/].[dispatcherServlet] : Servlet.service() for servlet [dispatcherServlet] in context with path [] threw exception [Circular view path [courses]: would dispatch back to the current handler URL [/courses] again. Check your ViewResolver setup! (Hint: This may be the result of an unspecified view, due to default view name generation.)] with root cause
I have this code in my controller:
#Controller
public class CourseController {
#RequestMapping(value="/")
public String rootPath() {
return "courses";
}
#RequestMapping(value="courses")
public String courses (ModelMap model) {
return "courses";
}
}
And this is my POM file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>net.proffesso.videos</groupId>
<artifactId>CourseCreation</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>CourseCreation</name>
<description>CourseCreation project using Spring Boot</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.0.2.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>mysql</groupId>
<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
One suggestion I read said to change the Spring Boot starter dependency from
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
to
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>
My POM file had both of those dependencies generated in it, and if I remove the spring-boot-starter-web one, then I get errors on #Controller and #RequestMapping