Burton and Orientalism: Burton and contemporary discourse

The present work examines the way in which the travels and journeys in Arabia and other Muslim lands of Richard Francis Burton, the nineteenth-century explorer and writer have, since the influential work of Edward W. Said on Orientalism, been somewhat undervalued by contemporaries. It aims to offer a re-evaluation of those works and their contribution to Victorian knowledge. It also offers a challenge to Said’s account of Burton and, particularly in the second part of the book, looks at the negative ways in which Burton has been viewed more generally by post-colonial theorists since Said’s influential work. A further aim of the book is to bring together the viewpoints on Burton of the biographers and postcolonial critics who appear to have previously worked largely in isolation from one another. It is the author's belief that such a union will lead to a mutually beneficial process of cross-fertilisation that will reveal a more complicated—and also more accurate—Burton for detailed future consideration and discussion.