ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of literary tourism depends on a text’s ability to create a sense of place. This chapter explores the many ways stories turn points in space into places, as a prelude to an investigation of the theoretical assumptions that underlie the phenomenon of literary (and more broadly, narrative) tourism. I argue in favour of a conception of literary fiction based on the notion of “possible worlds” that explains both the divergence and similarities between the places mentioned in literature and their real-world counterparts. The experience of literary tourists relies on a paradox: on the one hand, it is driven by their desire to see the real-world counterparts of fictional places with their own eyes; on the other hand, this experience is heavily mediated by the text, so that what is being seen is not a place in itself but a source of literary inspiration. The second part of the chapter discusses Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, an actual museum located in Istanbul, as an original contribution to literary tourism. Most examples of literary tourism are bottom-up responses to the popularity of a text that captures the imagination. The uniqueness of Pamuk’s project lies in the fact that the museum was conceived from the very beginning as a companion piece to a novel of the same name. The ideas of the museum and of the novel are inextricably entwined in Pamuk’s mind, and the museum is not a commercial exploitation of the success of the novel. The discussion focuses on the interplay of fictional and factual elements, on the importance of objects, on the contribution of both the novel and the actual museum to the capture of the genius loci of Istanbul, and on what kind of experience the museum provides to two kinds of visitors: those who have read the novel and those who have not.
