Literature

This dictionary entry on “literature” is written within the scope of interdisciplinary literary tourism studies rather than traditional literary studies or criticism. The term “literature” encompasses a multitude of (ambiguous) meanings, and it cannot be defined by objective standards: “[…] drop the illusion that the category «literature» is «objective», in the sense of being eternally given and immutable. Anything can be literature, and […] any belief that the study of literature is the study of a stable, well-definable entity, as entomology is the study of insects, can be abandoned as a chimera.” (Eagleton, [1983] 1996, p. 9).

As such, literature can refer to the body of written work about a topic (e.g., “literature about tourism” or “literature about routes and trails.”), and it can also indicate the art of language that takes on various forms (poetry, fictional and nonfictional narrative, and drama) categorised in a taxonomy of literary genres (e.g., novel, short story, memoir, horror, mystery). It may also refer to those textual or oral works collectively and consensually recognised as literature (Fish, 1980). Literature can also be the artistic “report of all human experience” (Schwarz, 2014, p.4). A “report” that is not distinguished by inherent textual features or “literariness” (Culler, 1997, p. 18). In short, the open-endedness and potential of the construct of “literature” invite the audience to explore and contribute to its diverse interpretations.

A definition of literature in the context of literary tourism studies does not align with any specific school of literary criticism. However, it places emphasis on reader-response criticism, as literary-induced travel directly stems from the influence and the meaning of literary art on individuals. Just as there is no travelling without an individual, there is no literature without a reader, as there is no text without its reader (cf. Fish, 1980; Iser, 1978). This underscores the pivotal role of the reader in interpreting literature, making the reader an integral part of the literary discourse. In this regard, Louise M. Rosenblatt states that literature refers to the product of the transaction of a reader with a text. In this perspective, the literary text is a situated “event” that arises when the reader, conditioned by the text (e.g., its ambiguities, structure, authorship, intertextuality) and by a specific disposition, chooses to read a text as literature (Rosenblatt, [1978] 1993, p. 16). In other words, literature does not correspond to a specific type of text but to a “realisation”: “The literary work exists in the live circuit set up between reader and text.” (Rosenblatt, [1938] 2005, p. 24), and each work of literary art multiplies into several unique and subjective objects, since it results from this transactional process between the reader and the text in a specific time and space (Rosenblatt, [1978] 1993, p. 12). From this perspective, a literary text is not an object or an entity outside the read but rather the result of “an active process lived through the relationship between a reader and a text.” (Rosenblatt, [1978] 1993, pp. 20-21).

This mediation is strongly influenced by the human element present through the author's choices (Rosenblatt, [1938] 2005, p. 34) that, to a large extent, captures the readers and makes them, for example, attribute the status of human beings to the characters: “Whatever the form – poem, novel, drama, biography, essay – literature makes comprehensible the myriad ways in which human beings meet the infinite possibilities that life offers. And always we seek some close contact with a mind uttering its sense of life. […] No matter how much else art may offer, no matter how much the writer may be absorbed in solving the technical problems of his craft, in creating words new forms of aesthetic experience, the human element cannot be banished.” (Rosenblatt, [1938] 2005, pp. 5-6).

Only in a literary text, as opposed to an informative or didactic text, is there “an overflow of possibilities” (Iser, 1978, p. 126), a range of possibilities of meaning from which the reader will establish the necessary connections between the elements that are in the text and those that are not: the “blank spaces” and “gaps” - in order to produce an interpretative initiative, a meaning, but not the only possible meaning. From this perspective, the literary text offers the reader multiple possibilities. These are revealed in each act of reading when, in the process of making a literary text coherent, the reader fills in these gaps, thus carrying out the first task of the work of reception and the basis of interpreting a literary text.

By distinguishing between “writable texts”, in which the reader takes on the role of producer/author, and “readable texts”, those that demand a less active reader/consumer, Roland Barthes (1970) has also emphasised this interactive relationship between the reader and the text and the notion of the literary text as a production that lies between the author's real text and the work of reading carried out by the reader. In this perspective, the literary text is a construction of the act of reading, as it is up to the reader to idiosyncratically establish the bridges between the multiple connections suggested by the text.

However, not all texts are literature. And even if the reader adopts a particular disposition to read a text as literature, that does not transform an informative text into a literary text, for instance. “The most intense nature of literary language resides in an undefined domain”, the “dark matter” (Martins, 2003, p. 115), which “[…] based on the fictional specificity of the representation of man and life, constantly takes us back to a dark, indeterminate and non-rational side of artistic communication, and which Western literary thought, from Plato's poetics of enthusiasm to Derridean indecipherability, has always recognised and consecrated in terms of the ineffable, the unspeakable, the neutral, etc.” (Martins, 2003, pp. 115-116).

In short, although there is no definite answer to the question “What is literature?” in this dictionary entry, literature is perceived as a linguistic construction that is not necessarily characterised by specific language features (Culler, 1997; Eagleton, 1987; Frye, [1957] 1973); the literary text is the manifestation of the transaction/interaction between the reader and the text (Iser, 1978; Rosenblatt, [1938] 2005); the literary text is determined by a specific reading attitude (Barthes, 1970; Culler, 1997; Rosenblatt, [1938] 2005); the literary text offers multiple possibilities of meaning and interpretative initiatives, since its structure enhances this effect in the reader, specifically when the reader takes on the task of filling in the blanks contained therein (Eco, 1979; Iser, 1978).

In literary tourism studies, literature is a driving force that influences individuals to go on literary touring, at times intending to enhance the interpretation of literary texts via the experience of literary tourism (Baleiro, Viegas & Faria, 2022). In the scope of literary tourism studies, the literary representations of spaces, places, environment, and nature, along with the real-life references to the literary authors’ biographies and other elements of literary culture, are dragged to the physical geography of the world to highlight the uniqueness of destinations and as a means to stand out amongst other destinations. The ultimate goal could be preserving literary heritage or promoting the economic profit tourism brings to destinations.

How to cite this entry: Baleiro, R. (2024). Literature. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.). E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia.