Is literary tourism a phenomenon that can be experienced? The novelist, Marcel Proust, expresses the effect that literary texts have upon places in the minds of certain readers in his most famous novel. Just a note before you plunge in, Bergotte was Proust’s character whom he based on the Nobel laureate, Anatole France: Going to the Champs-Élysées Garden was unbearable for me. If only Bergotte had described it in one of his novels, I would probably have wanted to get to know it, like all those things whose 'double' had been planted in my imagination. Description warmed the things, made them live, gave them a personality, and I wanted to find them again in reality; but in this public garden nothing was attached to my dreams. (Proust) Aller aux Champs-Élysées me fut insupportable. Si seulement Bergotte les eût décrits dans un de ses livres, sans doute j’aurais désiré de les connaître, comme toutes les choses dont on avait commencé par mettre le « double » dans mon imaginat
ISSN 2753-7803
