Orientalism, Islam, and Eroticism: Captain sir richard francis burton and the Arabian nights

Abstract

The year 2021 marks the bicentenary of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). This discussion assesses Burton's career as a Victorian soldier, explorer, and writer through the theoretical framework of Edward Said's Orientalism. Burton spent years immersed in the languages and cultures of the Arab-Islamic world; while serving as an agent in the British Empire, he also challenged assumed western social and moral superiority to eastern cultures. Burton's controversial translation of the Arabian Nights (1885-1888) reveals his resistance to British sexual norms by presenting the East as a site of erotic liberation. Defying censorship laws, Burton delighted in displaying his knowledge of eastern pornography and homosexual practices. As a landmark of European scholarship and a book considered shockingly explicit by contemporaries, Burton's Nights proves to be the major work of an enfant terrible of the Victorian fin de siècle.