Book chapter
From text to place and back: Exploring information dynamics and visitor engagement at literary heritage sites
The Fluidity of Collective Memory: Time, Place, and Meaning-Making in Recalling the Past, pp.21-40
Bloomsbury Academic & Professional
2026
DOI: 10.5040/9781978746923.ch-1
Abstract
The chapter investigates the multifaceted experiences literary heritage sites, such as Tintern Abbey and Dove Cottage, offer to visitors, focusing on how these environments enrich the understanding and enjoyment of literature. By exploring the integration of embedded, recorded and experienced information, this research reveals how visitors engage with both the affective and intellectual dimensions of literary heritage. Utilizing auto-ethnographic reflections, we demonstrate how the physical remnants of an author’s life combined with the landscapes that inspired their work transform literary texts into embodied experiences. We argue that these encounters foster deeper insights into both the authors’ lives and their literary creations. Ultimately, the study underscores the dynamic and performative nature of heritage, where meaning is continuously co-created by visitors and the sites themselves, offering an immersive experience that bridges the gap between text and place. Visiting literary heritage sites is an old pastime often associated with encountering a concrete shape of the past in physical surrogates of landscapes and buildings of the past; they serve as immersive environments where literature, history and place converge to enable meaningful experiences. These sites, intimately connected to the life and works of writers, invite visitors to engage with literature in ways that extend beyond mere reading. By walking through the landscapes that inspired a writer and encountering personal artefacts from their life, visitors can transform information into embodied experiences....
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- From text to place and back: Exploring information dynamics and visitor engagement at literary heritage sites
- Creators
- Iulian Vamanu - University of IowaRachel Rackham - University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, United States
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Fluidity of Collective Memory: Time, Place, and Meaning-Making in Recalling the Past, pp.21-40
- DOI
- 10.5040/9781978746923.ch-1
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic & Professional; New York
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2026
- Academic Unit
- School of Library and Information Science; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9985116169302771
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