Reading Between the Scenes

Abstract

Departing from the assumption that cinema has always had the capacity to represent social structures and movements and provide valuable sources of information about societal phenomena, this chapter employs representation as a research approach to offer contributions to understanding realities “outside the film” regarding literary tourists' motivations, experiences, and literary places. The authors analyse cinematic representations of literary tourism in feature films and take the perspective of literary tourism studies, reviewing the literature on cultural tourism, special interest tourism, niche tourism, literary tourism, and literary sites and landscape. The analysis and interpretation of the cinematic sequences reveal two opposed ideas of what literary tourism experiences might be: a shallow, disappointing, and inauthentic experience or a meaningful and authentic event.