Richard Burton: Foreignizing Literature

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) fashioned himself as the archetypical cosmopolite: linguistic genius, intrepid explorer, polymath translator. The pilgrim to Mecca, traveler to Salt Lake City, and explorer of the Mountains of the Moon in Central Africa was a countercultural hero, an outspoken critic of Victorian prudery and the civilizing pretensions of the British empire. Translation, he believed, was key to the cosmopolitan and the imperial enterprise; and his infamously foreignizing The 1001 Nights would appeal to authors from Joyce to Pamuk and Rushdie. This chapter charts the trajectory of a literary career that remains a touchstone for theorists of cosmopolitanism, world literature, and translation. It asks if the work can be disentangled from the life, Burton's cosmopolitanism from his prejudice.