Same-sex Desire in the English Renaissance (Garland Studies in the Renaissance)

Rating:
Summary: Amazon's Summary of this Book Misrepresents Its Conclusions
Review: Because I'm the editor of this anthology, I would have much preferred to leave the star category blank in my comment here, but in order to post anything that field must be filled in. So please assign this five-star rating to some of the authors anthologized, such as John Donne and Aretino, who certainly deserve it. I am not giving any rating to the anthology itself.

Contrary to Amazon's book summary, I do not in fact conclude that "homosexuality [was] differentiated as a distinct sexual identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

From my viewpoint, such a conclusion, in those words, would be clearly a blunder. It is well known that the term "homosexuality" as well as various concepts that it implies had yet to be invented. I actually argue that so-called homosexuality had significant precursors dating from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and show how those prior notions of same-sex love, and of correlative types of person, developed further in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Those conceptions in some ways anticipating so-called homosexuality would have enabled both male and female same-sex sexual affiliations to be conceived and consciously distinguished not only by lovers of their own sex themselves but also more broadly in society. Present ideas of homosexuality emerge from that history.

I asked Amazon to correct this error in its summary of my argument and got a bureaucratic runaround. It seems unfortunate that the company is not able to respond better to concerns of an author about factually accurate representation of a book, because that is needful to inform potential buyers adequately about it. Nevertheless, I appreciate Amazon otherwise, have been happy dealing with the company as a customer, and would recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Amazon's Summary of this Book Misrepresents Its Conclusions
Review: Because I'm the editor of this anthology, I would have much preferred to leave the star category blank in my comment here, but in order to post anything that field must be filled in. So please assign this five-star rating to some of the authors anthologized, such as John Donne and Aretino, who certainly deserve it. I am not giving any rating to the anthology itself.

Contrary to Amazon's book summary, I do not in fact conclude that "homosexuality [was] differentiated as a distinct sexual identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

From my viewpoint, such a conclusion, in those words, would be clearly a blunder. It is well known that the term "homosexuality" as well as various concepts that it implies had yet to be invented. I actually argue that so-called homosexuality had significant precursors dating from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and show how those prior notions of same-sex love, and of correlative types of person, developed further in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Those conceptions in some ways anticipating so-called homosexuality would have enabled both male and female same-sex sexual affiliations to be conceived and consciously distinguished not only by lovers of their own sex themselves but also more broadly in society. Present ideas of homosexuality emerge from that history.

I asked Amazon to correct this error in its summary of my argument and got a bureaucratic runaround. It seems unfortunate that the company is not able to respond better to concerns of an author about factually accurate representation of a book, because that is needful to inform potential buyers adequately about it. Nevertheless, I appreciate Amazon otherwise, have been happy dealing with the company as a customer, and would recommend it to anyone.