This book was born, first and foremost, from a personal interest in literary locations. I am among those who, before setting out on a trip, choose a poetic work or a work of fiction that is connected to the location they are about to visit, as their travel companion and who, during their tour, abandon the more beaten paths of tourism in order to visit buildings, small towns, and streets that poetry has passed through. Such an interest - that someone, not erroneously, could define as mania - was accompanied, over time, by the collection of material related to the topic of âliterature and tourismâ: literary guides, catalogues of writersâ homes, newspaper clippings, various notes during visits, of conferences, or reading seminars.
Cultural interests, more closely linked to an education as an Italianist (which also led to the writing of a literary guide on the mountains of Pistoia, published in 2008), was intertwined with curiosity about aspects that we could define as organizational and managerial, in the attempt to better understand how literary tourism works, which reflections are made on the subject by economists, marketing and geography experts, the problems related to the creation and management of a literary Park or Festival, which stages lead to the opening of a house museum and how these spaces are designed, set up, managed, and promoted. The most âconcreteâ side of the literary interest is at least in part related to an administrative experience had in my city, Pistoia, as councillor of culture and tourism: an experience during which issues related to the organization of events, the evaluation of their impact also in economic terms, the search for funding and contributions, and the management of cultural spaces, were on the agenda (museums, libraries, theatres). That commitment in the local administration gave birth to, in more recent years, the direction of âNaturartâ, a magazine focused on the promotion of our region through culture and landscape, as well as through the enhancement of experiences of excellence in the production field.
When my University (Università per Stranieri di Perugia) decided to open a new undergraduate degree course on âMade in Italy, food, and hospitalityâ (that puts two large topics together: that of tourism and that of the production of traditional products and enogastronomy), I proposed to include in the study program a discipline called âLiterature, tourism and promotion of the territoryâ. This teaching experience (which has been and continues to also be a research and study experience) has flanked the activity closest to what we could define as the orthodoxy of Italianism and has represented, in some respects, a pleasant distraction. I was able to verify, with the students that attended my classes, young peoplesâ interest in these topics, the desire to measure oneself
It was thus possible to measure oneself against a given fact: the lack of a text that could perform the function of an overall framework, proposing the main aspects of the issue, with the tools of those who deal daily with literature but also trying to build up some small (and inadequate) knowledge in areas such as the geography of tourism, the setting up and management of exhibition spaces, and creativity marketing. It should be clear: in these latter listed areas, I do not claim to work with particular competence; but these are sectors with which even the Italianist must come into contact if he wants to deal with literature, tourism, and regional promotion, all the more so since it is geographers, marketing scholars and museologists who have been primarily concerned with this issue until now.
The book, which was published in Italy in 2019 and is now being released - with some updates - in Spain and Great Britain - is dedicated to my wife, Francesca, who accompanied me during some literary trips, including the one that lead us - when we were very young - to visit Tôtes (a town hidden in the plains of Normandy) as it was connected to the memory of Emma Bovary and to cross - in that same location - the threshold of a small hotel for the sole reason that Guy de Maupassant had set some pages of Boule de suif in that building.