ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the investigation into fluid, nonbinary identity formation, but extends the project beyond drama to look at cross-cultural encounters as depicted in early modern travel narratives. These travelers recorded their encounters with the other for an audience of English readers familiar with the discourse of travel and its emphasis on the stability of English identity. The importance of stability can be found in anti-travel tracts that express anxiety about Englishmen abroad becoming corrupted by the cultures that they visit. As a means of counteracting such influences, travel guides emphasize travelers' vocations and their actions as merchants, emissaries, pilgrims, and spies. The moment shows how physically and spiritually vulnerable an Englishman's identity could be in Ottoman lands and how the act of recording the event can work to reiterate a stable English identity. Sanderson resists and is able to reinscribe his Englishness by carefully recording his words and those of the Ottoman.
