Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650 (Garland Studies in the Renaissance) [Hardcover]

Kenneth Borris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0815336268 | ISBN-13: 978-0815336266 | Edition: 1

The readings gathered here include many rare texts that have not been reprinted for centuries, excerpted from biblical commentary, legal writings, medical and scientific writings, popular encyclopedias, and literature, as well as continental vernacular and Latin sources never before available in English translation. The selections are assembled in ten chapters addressing particular discursive fields - Theology, Law, Medicine, Astrology, Physiognomics, Encyclopedias and Reference Works, Prodigious Monstrosities, Love and Friendship, the Sapphic Renaissance, and Erotica. Each chapter includes a substantial introduction summarizing its topic and its relation to early modern homoeroticism. The volume also poignantly addresses key issues in Renaissance thinking about sexual identity, and newly clarifies central problems and debates in the historiography of same-sex love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Borris has assembled a selection of primary texts that is absolutely unequaled by any other anthology. Instead of simply reflecting the current state of scholarship on homosexuality-what one expects in anthologies like this one-Borris pursues an original and timely argument that should make his book command attention in its own right, quite apart from the texts he has gathered. There is nothing like the panoply of texts from so many different fields of discourse that Borris has assembled in Same-Sex Desire. A signal excellence of Borris's collection is the way it maintains a central focus on English texts and yet ranges widely among texts originally produced in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. That range should make the volume useful to professors of literature and cultural studies in disciplines other than English.
–Bruce R. Smith, University of Southern California

About the Author

Kenneth Borris is Professor of English at McGill University. He is author of Spenser's Poetics of Prophecy and Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature: Heroic Form in Sidney, Spenser, and Milton. He is coeditor of The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield. He is a recipient of the MacCaffrey Award and a Canada Research Fellowship.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815336268
• ISBN-13: 978-0815336266
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,169,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazon's Summary of this Book Misrepresents Its Conclusions, May 12, 2004

By 

Kenneth Borris (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650 (Garland Studies in the Renaissance) (Hardcover)

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.