“Portrait of a Victorian Explorer: Richard F. Burton on Myths and Exoticism”

This article investigates Burton’s wide array of hybrid cultural identities as a fluid, mobile perspective which opposes the imperial allegiances of his year-long experiences in the diplomatic service. By focusing on Burton’s travel accounts, his biographies and portraits, I argue that the Victorian polymath embraces an unstable identity that determined his success at challenging the imperial dynamics from within. His cross-dressing practices and his cultural shifts in the spaces between places and languages become then a primary location of empire in itself, albeit one which resists the dual divisions of gendered spaces and spheres.