Are we consuming an authentic place, or are we willingly participating in a beautifully staged performance designed around our own expectations?

In this opening episode of Journey 7, we begin our exploration of literary tourism. When we travel to the places that inspired our favorite books, whose landscape are we actually stepping into? Today. we cross the eight-mile concrete expanse onto Prince Edward Island to investigate the massive, multi-million dollar infrastructure designed to capitalize on Anne of Green Gables. Along the way, we unpack our collective urge to buy raspberry cordials and straw hats.

Along the way, we discover the strange history of the historical Grand Tour, and we investigate the “tourist gaze” and how the global tourism industry packages our favorite books into easily consumed souvenirs. If you love travelogues, literary history, or exploring the real-world histories behind famous books like Anne of Green Gables, this episode will challenge the way we view our next vacation destination.

Episode 7.01 –

Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion

Readings & Resources:

Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of Green Gables. 1908
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne of the Island. 1915
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Anne’s House of Dreams. 1917
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Story Girl. 1911

MacLeod, Nicola E. Literary Fiction Tourism: Understanding the Practice of Fiction-Inspired Travel. Routledge, 2024

Glossary:

Grand Tour: A traditional, multi-year journey across continental Europe that served as a mandatory educational rite of passage for upper-class, wealthy young men from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries. Officially intended to complete a gentleman’s classical education by exposing him to the art, architecture, and polite society of the Old World, it also provided a socially acceptable escape from parental control to pursue worldly pleasures and construct an elite “martial masculinity.”

Tourist Gaze: How travelers view and consume a destination, shaped by what guidebooks and the tourism industry have conditioned them to expect to see.

Skeptical Pilgrim: A traveler who deeply loves a literary work or historical destination but adopts a critical, questioning posture, refusing to passively accept the fictionalized, manufactured reality that a tourist destination attempts to sell them.

Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions

When you select a specific souvenir from a location, how does that physical object alter or secure the memory of the real space you left behind?
Consider the texts you choose to read versus the places you choose to visit; what makes a comforting historical fiction preferable to a reality of contemporary labor?
In analyzing your own home, what is the process of selection behind the display pieces on your shelves, and how do they perform an identity for visitors?
How does the presence of a guidebook or a digital travel route affect your ability to notice the un-curated, raw elements of a new place?
If you map your immediate neighborhood purely through your senses rather than visual landmarks, how does that shift your understanding of who owns and occupies that space?

Skeptical Pilgrim Challenges 1: The Grand Tour - PDF Download

Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/literary-tourism/

CHAPTERS

00:00 Field Notes & Trailhead 0:00:0.000000
05:35 Intro Theme
06:11 Montgomery and Two Worlds
10:53 The Grand Tour and the Invention of the Gaze
17:57 Tourist Gazing
25:40 Skeptic Pilgrim Challenges
28:28 Screens and Modern Escapes
32:54 Closing Credits

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Transcript and Full Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/7-01-Grand-Tours-1

**New to Literary Nomads?**

Check out my introductory episodes (0.1-0.3) to find out what’s going on here! I’ve got an episode for readers, for teachers, and for students: https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords-podcast/

Have a Question? Want to Comment? Literary Nomads Mailbag

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Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.

Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.

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CREDITS:

Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

USING THIS WORK:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.

MLA CITATION:

Chisnell, Steve. “7.01: Grand Tours Pt 1: The Postcard Illusion,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 19 June 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.