Geographies of Literary Tourism

Paulo Fernando Meliani (Santa Catarina State University, Geoprocessing Laboratory – GeoLab, Brazil).

Geographies of Literary Tourism refer to geographical approaches to the socio-spatial processes through which tourism practices connect literary texts, authors, characters and settings to locations, routes and landscapes, turning literary references into meaningful tourist sites. In tourism studies, this set of practices is commonly understood as literary tourism, a field situated within cultural and heritage tourism, in which writers, literary works and fictional worlds draw visitors to author-related sites, textual settings, book towns, festivals and organised tours (Hoppen, Brown, & Fyall, 2014; Çevik, 2020). These practices are geographical because they locate literary references in space, organise them into sites and itineraries, orient modes of visitation, and depend on selective processes of recognition, mediation and territorial valorisation. Geographies of Literary Tourism may be studied through interrelated dimensions, including the spatial distribution of literary references, their organisation into sites and routes, visitor practices and mobilities, the institutional mediation and management of literary places, and the territorial hierarchies produced when literary value is converted into territorial and tourism value.

The spatial distribution of literary tourism concerns where literary references appear and how they concentrate or disperse as identifiable tourist sites. It includes both dense literary clusters, such as cities, neighbourhoods or book towns, and more dispersed points, such as graves, houses, cafés, libraries and landscapes associated with particular texts. Çevik’s review of literary tourism types helps specify this distribution through author-related sites, fictional places, areas associated with literary figures, places made popular by literature, travel writing, film-induced literary tourism, literary festivals and bookshop tourism (Çevik, 2020). These locations, events and environments become literary places when they operate as what Cresswell (2015, p. 12) defines as a “meaningful location”, combining material setting, attachment, experience and shared interpretation. In this sense, distribution is already interpretive, since literary visibility depends on the connection between material location and symbolic association. This distribution gives spatial presence to authors, works and characters through a field of biographical, textual and event-based places that may later be organised into routes, circuits and destinations.   

Literary tourism is spatially organised when places associated with writers, works and characters are connected through routes, maps, guidebooks and digital platforms. This organisation gives order to dispersed literary references and turns them into a spatial structure that visitors can recognise, follow and interpret. Hoppen, Brown, and Fyall (2014) show that guidebooks, literary maps, tourism websites and online route-planning tools help visitors identify literary destinations, bookshops, activities and events, turning dispersed references into possible travel itineraries. Such devices do not simply provide information. They select places, establish connections and frame the way literary space is approached. A route is not simply a line between points; it selects what is relevant, establishes a sequence and offers an interpretation of literary territory. Spatial organisation, therefore, translates a scattered geography of authorial and textual places into visitable itineraries, preparing the movements, gazes and embodied practices through which visitors encounter literary tourism sites.

Visitor practices and mobilities bring literary tourism into action by transforming organised places and routes into situated experiences of movement, looking, reading, affect and imagination. Urry and Larsen (2011) show that the tourist gaze is anticipated and sustained through media such as literature, while also being enacted through embodied and hybrid performances rather than through vision alone. In literary tourism, this means that visitors do not merely observe sites associated with authors or works; they move through them, recognise signs, compare textual expectations with material settings and perform their own relation to literary worlds. Baleiro, Viegas, and Faria (2022) reinforce this point by showing that literary tourism experience emerges from interaction with place, personal literary knowledge, emotions, expectations and imagination. Literary places are therefore experienced as co-produced spaces, where textual memory, bodily movement and interpretive work combine before being stabilised by the institutional mediations examined in the following dimension.

Institutional mediation in literary tourism refers to the set of cultural, heritage and tourism actions that recognise, interpret and manage literary references as tourist sites open to the public. This mediation is geographical because it gives material form and spatial stability to dispersed memories, texts and imaginaries, deciding where they are preserved, displayed, signposted, narrated and connected to local tourism. Strepetova and Arcos-Pumarola (2020) show that literary heritage depends on the relation between intangible meanings and tangible supports, since books, archives, objects, houses, landscapes and exhibitions make authors’ ideas and literary worlds communicable. Museums, writers’ houses, guides, curators, municipalities and tourism bodies therefore transform literary meanings into spatial arrangements by preserving sites, designing exhibitions, guiding visits and promoting routes. These choices define which authors, works and places receive recognition, investment and visibility, opening the question of territorial hierarchies.

Territorial hierarchies emerge when literary value is unevenly translated into tourism visibility, destination image and economic opportunity. This unevenness is not accidental: it reflects the selective capacity of institutions, markets and cultural canons to transform some literary associations into recognised tourism assets while others remain peripheral. Hoppen, Brown, and Fyall (2014) analyse literary tourism as a field of destination marketing and branding, in which authors, works, fictional settings, book-related activities and festivals become resources for tourism products and place promotion. Such conversion gives literature economic and promotional force, but also exposes it to simplification, commodification and selective packaging. Arcos-Pumarola, Osácar Marzal, and Llonch-Molina (2018) add a more critical spatial dimension by arguing that literary landscapes can broaden destination images, reveal less-visited urban areas, and challenge mainstream tourist narratives. These processes select which authors, languages, works, and places receive recognition and investment, converting literature into territorial value while leaving other literary associations marginal, invisible or weakly institutionalised.

Geographical approaches to literary tourism examine the passage from literary reference to spatial practice. Literature enters tourism when texts, authors, characters, and fictional worlds lend symbolic density to locations, making them recognisable as tourist sites. A literary tourism place is produced through the encounter among textual memory, material setting, institutional recognition and visitor performance. This process is selective: some authors, languages, works and places become visible, promoted and visited, while others remain marginal, weakly institutionalised or absent from tourism narratives. Geographies of Literary Tourism offer a critical framework for understanding how literature becomes territorial, how tourism makes this territorialisation visitable, and how places are produced, ordered and disputed through literary imagination.

How to cite this entry: Meliani, P. F. (2026). Geographies of literary tourism. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.), E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia. https://doi.org/10.34623/zdg2-hn59

References

Arcos-Pumarola, J., Osácar Marzal, E., & Llonch-Molina, N. (2018). Literary urban landscape in a sustainable tourism context. Human Geographies: Journal of Studies and Research in Human Geography, 12(2), 175–189. https://doi.org/10.5719/hgeo.2018.122.3

Baleiro, R., Viegas, M., & Faria, D. (2022). Contributes to the profile of the Brazilian literary tourist: Experience and motivation. Revista Anais Brasileiros de Estudos Turísticos / ABET, 12(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6643908

Çevik, S. (2020). Literary tourism as a field of research over the period 1997–2016. European Journal of Tourism Research, 24, 2407. https://doi.org/10.54055/ejtr.v24i.409

Cresswell, T. (2015). Place: An introduction (2nd ed.). Wiley Blackwell.

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

Strepetova, M., & Arcos-Pumarola, J. (2020). Literary heritage in museum exhibitions: Identifying its main challenges in the European context. Muzeológia a kultúrne dedičstvo, 8(3), 95–109. https://doi.org/10.46284/mkd.2020.8.3.5

Urry, J., & Larsen, J. (2011). The tourist gaze 3.0. SAGE.