Walking the River

Writers on the Banks

Abstract

Rivers have played an important role, during the history of the humankind, as ways of transportation, sources of water, physical obstacles, places for settlements, borders. For this prominent role in everyday life, rivers also gained a consolidated symbolic value and entered the geographical imaginaries as protagonists. Literature mirrors this immaterial value of rivers, with numerous literary works focused on travels along rivers, in different geographical contexts all over the world. Each different means of transportation used to travel along a river creates a different perception of the fluvial environment. Using a literary geography approach, the essay analyses three contemporary literary accounts of authors who decided to walk following the course of a river: Racconto del fiume Sangro by Italian author Paolo Morelli (2013), Maldifiume by Italian writer Simona Baldanzi (2016), and Walking the Nile by British explorer and writer Levison Wood (2015). The three works share the same idea (walking alone along a river from the springs to the mouth) and the same temporal frame (all three literary accounts were written in the second decade of the current century). The research question focuses on the role that the river plays in shaping the identity of the walking experience and the perception of the territories that the river crosses.