Literary Heritage and Tourism

Jordi Arcos-Pumarola (CETT – University of Barcelona, Spain)

Literary heritage is a complex notion that encompasses a diversity of meanings, as it refers to a mixed reality with both tangible and intangible significance (Munmany Muntal, 2017). In addition, the notion of literary heritage requires the necessary revision and constant updating of its referents, as it is, like all heritage, a social construct shaped by present cultural trends and values (Prats, 1998).

Given this complexity, the definition and concretisation of this concept are essential for the development of literary tourism, insofar as they enable the identification of the resources from which to develop a literary tourism offer in a specific territory. Considering this, literary heritage is a concept that has received four general meanings in current literature (Arcos-Pumarola et al., 2019).

On the one hand, it is regarded as the original material substratum of the literary expression. Here, the book itself appears as the first source of literary heritage. Therefore, turning the literary manuscript into a heritage item becomes our centre of interest.

On the other hand, literary heritage is formed by the immaterial legacy generated and created by the author. In this way, the importance of the literary expression is put, on the one hand, on the set of ideas, values, feelings, etc., the creator-subject has generated and, on the other hand, on the study of the aesthetic quality of their texts.

Third, literature is always related to the cultural framework in which a particular book has appeared. The reception of a literary work is part of the social being of the literary work, being the author, the book, and the society as a whole. Considering this notion of the social being of literature, literary heritage is sometimes understood as the influence that certain literary works had towards the language or the collective identity of a social group.

Finally, literature and its authors are inseparable from the territory represented in the book or from the places where the author lived and experienced relevant episodes of their life that marked their work. Here, literary heritage becomes tangible and is related to the human geography of territories; literary heritage is a layer of meaning that overlaps the territory and allows the identification of a series of literary places with a wealth of relevant meaning by virtue of literature.

This last notion of literary heritage, framed within the subjective geography (Soldevila i Balart & De San Eugenio Vela, 2012), is particularly relevant to literary tourism, as it enables the identification of places with potential appeal to visitors with literary interests. These literary places serve as memory triggers for tourists who are aware of the layer of meaning embedded in the literature.

Those places can generally be divided into two large groups, depending on whether they are related to a literary figure or to a literary plot grounded in a real place. This division allows destinations to build a literary tourism offer, since literary tourism could be understood as the visit to locations associated with the author or those featured within their writings (Hoppen et al., 2014). Literary tourists are motivated to access these two layers of meaning related to literature: the one that follows the steps of a literary figure’s life, and the one born through the appearance and heritagization of a literary work that refers to and signals the physical territory.

Thus, there are places where authors lived that allow us not only to get to know the figure behind their literary works, but also to draw closer to the authors’ inspiration and creative moments by knowing the environments in which they wrote. Some examples of literary places that become a point of interest are the city of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, where JRR Tolkien spent part of his childhood, including some places that evoke the imaginary Middle-earth, showing that this city was a source of inspiration for The Lord of the Rings’ author (Arcos-Pumarola et al., 2018); or the relationship established between Goethe and Lake Garda after his travel to Italy (Uccella, 2009).

Among these biographical places, the house where an author lived during a specific moment in their life is particularly relevant in the link between tourism and literary heritage. On the one hand, a literary house museum stands out as a singular attraction, accessible and open, so visitors with literary interests might start the unveiling of a literary landscape with the literary house museum as a starting point. On the other hand, given museums’ educational mission, literature house museums are ideal spaces to increase visitors’ literary awareness, enabling them to later read and interpret the literary landscape. Thus, literary house museums face the challenge of making literary heritage visible and enhancing it (Strepetova & Arcos-Pumarola, 2020).

In parallel with these biographical places, literature also enriches the cultural background of the landscape, since literary works’ content may depict the territory with a particular gaze, highlighting certain ways of life and, therefore, providing a singular approach to it. This literary gaze on the territory allows for the identification of locations that become attractive through literature. An example of this second type of literary place is Leopold Bloom’s Dublin, a detailed portrayal of the Irish capital, which shows a realistic gaze of the city within a fictional plot (Lemos, 2020), or Sherlock Holmes’ London, which provides a dark and mysterious atmosphere of the British city (van Es & Reijnders, 2018).

In conclusion, tourism and literary heritage meet when the latter is understood from a subjective literary perspective. This comprehension of literary heritage comprises two layers of meaning: one related to authors’ biographies and the other to the appearance of the territory in literary works. Nevertheless, it must be taken into account that those literary places are highlighted not by virtue of their physical traits but rather their condition of literary places comes from an intangible source. In this sense, literary places are not visible to the tourist gaze without a marker (MacCannell, 1999) that highlights the importance and meaning of the literary place beyond the erudite visitor. In this way, developing a literary tourism offering might increase the visibility of literary heritage.

How to cite this dictionary entry: Arcos-Pumarola, J. (2023). Literary heritage and tourism. In Baleiro, R., Capecchi, G., & Arcos-Pumarola, J. (Eds.). E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia.

References

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Arcos-Pumarola, J., Osácar Marzal, E. & Llonch-Molina, N. (2019). The concept of literary heritage: a definition through bibliographic review. Forum for World Literature Studies, 11(1), 97–120.

Hoppen, A., Brown, L. & Fyall, A. (2014). Literary tourism: Opportunities and challenges for the marketing and branding of destinations? Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, 3(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2013.12.009

Lemos, M. (2020). Writing Dublin: Joyce, Bloomsday and Tourism in the Irish Capital. Via Panoramica: Revista de Estudos Anglo-Americanos, 3(9), 67–77.

MacCannell, D. (1999). The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. University of California Press.

Munmany Muntal, M. (2017). La gestió del patrimoni literari. Publicacions Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Prats, L. (1998). El Concepto De Patrimonio Cultural. Política y Sociedad, 27, 63–76.

Soldevila i Balart, L., & De San Eugenio Vela, J. (2012). Geografia literària dels Països Catalans. El cas de la comarca d’Osona. Ausa, 25(170), 979–1001.

Strepetova, M. & Arcos-Pumarola, J. (2020). Literary heritage in museum exhibitions: Identifying its main challenges in the European context. Muzeologia a Kulturne Dedicstvo, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.46284/mkd.2020.8.3.5

Uccella, F. R. (2009). La patrimonialització literària a Catalunya : Una aproximació. Mnèmosine, 5, 61–72.

van Es, N. & Reijnders, S. (2018). Making sense of capital crime cities: Getting underneath the urban facade on crime-detective fiction tours. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21(4), 502–520. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549416656855