Animation of Literature in Public Space: the Literary Guide (France & Italy)

n veut toujours que l’imagination soit la faculté de former des images. Or elle est plutôt la faculté de déformer les images fournies par la perception, elle est surtout la faculté de nous libérer des images premières, de changer les images (Bachelard, 1943: 10 -11).

Although widely employed in the world of tourism promotion and cultural mediation, the concept of the literary guide struggles to find a precise place, both on a scientific level and from a more strictly professional perspective. Visibly excluded from the list of ministerial professions – and still far too little studied to be able to hypothesise a qualifying qualification – this figure is often brought back to the status of cultural guide or tour leader without considering the peculiarities that the adjective "literary" entails, concerning the object of investigation, method of approach and animation strategies.

An interesting field of analysis seems to be offered, in this sense, by the French Heritage School and, more specifically, by the Jean Giono Literary Center (Haute Provence). Established by the municipality of Manosque in 1992 and since then, a literary museum, to the national network Fédération des maisons d'écrivains et des patrimoines littéraires, it is precisely this organisation that inaugurated the professional figure of the literary guide. This initiative follows from the programme of literary walks and trails promoted since the 1980s by Jean-Louis Carribou (Carribou, 2004 & 2012) and subsequently integrated into the Centre’s cultural offer in 1994. It is a dense network of walking routes that aim to promote a widespread literary experience of the territory of Manosque and the adjacent Lure mountain (in the Luberon Regional Natural Park), in the footsteps of the author's biographical and narrative memory. As Caribou points out, "These itineraries are the result of a long exploration in work, in topographical maps and the field. They do not claim to faithfully restore the setting of Giono's books [...], but propose to set foot in the landscapes and sites that were familiar to the writer, sometimes walked by him on foot, and thus to reach his territory of invention" (Carribou, 2004: 7), through an original play of overlaps between actual geography, biographical memory and the imaginary.

It is in this spurious patrimonial context that the figure of the literary guide was born at the behest of Caribou himself. Holder of a diploma for high-altitude accompaniment, the guide must attest not only to a technical knowledge of the mountains but also to a good literary knowledge, both general and relating to Jean Giono's work. In addition to these skills, he/she must demonstrate a certain poetic sensitivity: their task is to convey in situ the poetry and sensitivity inherent to the author's writing (Bonniot, 2016), with the aim of accompanying the visitor on an emotional and sensory journey at the same time, within the framework of the same creative interference - between literary evocation and direct experience of the real place - that underlies his invention. The focus of the mediation is to lead the public to actively participate in the construction – or rather, in the "deformation", to borrow Bachelard's words – of the territorial imaginary in question, by means of a dialogic and immersive practice of literature, capable of bringing together, in terms of reception and knowledge, subjective perception, geo-narrative creation and collective memory.

Acknowledged by the Center as a new speciality for Medium Mountain Leaders (although never formally codified), this professionalism traces, in terms of method and training, the profile of its creator, the Center's historic 'literary consultant' (from 1995 to 2015) and official trainer in the field of walking and literary animation. With a degree in literature and plant biology, Jean-Louis Carribou has been involved in the development and promotion of mountain sports and cultural activities since the 1960s (at the Direction départementale de la Jeunesse et des Sports des Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), working in this context on the development of the concept of culturally themed treks and on additional training for the accompanying persons concerned (the current literary guides of the Jean Giono Centre come from this path). The creation, by his hand, of a "Referentiel de compétences" for the literary guide (Le Bel, 2018), as well as the organization and animation of the cycle of internships "Découverte du patrimoine de la Haute-Provence à travers l'œuvre de Giono" (financed by the French Ministry of Culture) focused on the theme of the patrimonialisation of literature and literary tourism in Provence, with a specific focus on the peculiarities and potential of the profession, date back to this period. Methods and strategies of this particular form of literary animation are also detailed in the two printed guides 10 and 15 Balades littéraires à la rencontre de Jean Giono (Manosque et Montagne de Lure), of which Carribou is the author. Pedagogical strategies (which vary according to the audience in question) and geo-narrative themes of reference are specified here ("Jean Giono et le monde végétal", "Le monde des errants", "Le monde paysan", "Le monde des bergers", "La montagne de Lure"). Considerable space is given to the methodological structure of the walk, in terms of the conception of the route and the related forms of poetic and sensorial animation. By virtue of its effectiveness, this methodological proposal was included, in 2004, in the practical guide to pedagogical activities promoted by the Fédération des maisons d'écrivains et des patrimoines littéraires (category 'visits', section 'trekking'), as an operational model for the guided promotion of literature in an extra-urban context (Hadjadj & Rondin, 2004).

While we must undoubtedly credit Carribou with the professional conception of the concept of the literary guide, the invention of this Provençal geo-poetic adventure is nevertheless attributed to the writer himself. An indefatigable hiker, in 1935, after the success of his first novels, he agreed to accompany a group of passionate readers to the places of his biographical and narrative imagination, using this rhapsodic experience (what today we would call a literary trek) to propose a poetic and sensorial knowledge of the mountains. This initiative is at the origin of nine new encounters, renamed Les Rencontres du Contadour (1935-39). These are community mountain experiences that he narratively led, designed to make people (re)experience and perceive together the "poetry of the great spaces" (Carribou, 2004: 204) through contextualised animation of his poetic and narrative creations. The specific role of 'guide' is claimed by Giono himself. In an extract consecrated to the Lure mountain, now included in the collection Provence and relating to the peasant experience, we read how the narrative discovery of the mountain needs, in his opinion, on a real level, his 'guide', in order to orient his poetic perception and also to watch over its preservation and respect. His task is to 'talk' about the place, narrate it, and show its path to 'people of quality' (Godard, 1995). The horizon of expectation (Jauss, 1978) within which literary exploration moves thus takes on an essential territorial dimension because it is based on a dialogic reading pact (between writer and reader, animator and visitor), capable of making the text both an opportunity for poetic discovery and a possibility for (social and/or environmental) awareness of the real territory.

This twofold tendency currently guides the action of the Jean Giono Center and of many writers' home museums in France, which are increasingly oriented towards the promotion of literature of a landscape type and thus particularly attentive to the processes (sensitive and memorial) within which the text asserts itself, collectively, as a social fact and territorial image. From the closed space of the house, an essential node of creation, the exhibition route thus opens up various itineraries aimed at reconsidering "the relationships of the text with real spaces and the social groups that invest them" (Molina, 2010: 127). In this sense, the role of animation appears indispensable. In a delicate marriage between placetelling and storytelling, it is the guide's responsibility to accompany the public in the author's own process of creation and equally in a personal path of construction of the territorial imaginary in question, in the framework of a strong experiential reception of the text, capable of enhancing the sensitive components of the writing (narration and spatial perception) and its more purely memorial dimension (between collective imaginary and individual representation).

In this direction, the animation promoted by the Italian Literary Parks network is moving. As specified in the 'Sentimental Journeys' section of the site, the literary guide, here named “storyteller”, accompanies visitors along the author's paths, taking care to turn the poetic discovery into a broader path of participation and spatial comprehension to be carried out sensitively “through the emotions and the use of the five senses”. The exhibition itinerary is presented as an “itinerant show” with a strong symbolic value, aimed at (re)interpreting – and thus (re)experiencing – the places of writing in the encounter between literature, history, music and traditions and, equally, between visitors, actors, musicians and cultural operators.

The horizon of expectation within which the visit is structured then moves, once again, in an original space of intermingling of voices, practices and spatial uses. The literary guide's task is to propose a dialogical synthesis between literary knowledge, geographical emotion and poetic sensibility to bring out the literary landscape as "contextual narration" (Persi, 2003), a composite space of dialogue and interaction. The narrative imaginary, combined with the territorial imaginary of reference, thus becomes a criterion of investigation and a point of reference for the construction – and perpetuation – of a local collective memory (Halbwachs, 1950), of which the text is both agent and expression. In this sense, it constitutes an important local attractor in terms of tourism and community because it can contribute to the growth of the "vertical values" of the territory (Capecchi, 2019), also redirecting the expression of the place towards new practices of local awareness and action, of which the literary guide becomes promoter and guardian.

How to cite this dictionary entry: Mura, M. L. (2023). Animation of Literature in Public Space: the Literary Guide (France & Italy). In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.). E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia.