Where fiction really exists: The staging and experience of authenticity in the literary icon-city

Abstract

The prime focus of this paper is how authenticity is staged an experienced in literary icon-cities. A literary iconcity is a city that has gained iconic status because a literary icon either lived there, wrote about the city or both. The literary icon-city is conceptualised as a “mediated centre”: as a site that – in its mediated form – presents different kinds of authenticity and possible responses to these authenticity appeals. When visitors experience a “match” between their own conceptions and the physical reality, a special form of participation emerges where the staging of the icon in the literary icon-city frames the dynamic negotiations of the significance of literary heritage. In order to examine these dimensions further, the paper presents a four-part typology that can shed light on what is at stake when people are invited become involved in the literary icon-city, and the typology is explained and tested by use of the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s Vimmerby as an example. The typology takes into account that icon-cities can contain several types of appeals and that it is possible for the same visitor to look for different types of authenticity in the literary icon-city.