Literary Tourism with Emphasis on Myths and Folk Stories: Creative Economy for Isfahan City

Literary heritage is one of the cultural and creative industries, which today literary tourism as a special interest tourism strives for its sustainable commercialization. The objectives of the present research are to identify the literary myths and folk stories in Isfahan city and the places related to them. In this regard, the qualitative method (thematic analysis) was used. The result of the data analysis illustrated that the city of Isfahan by including places with four sub-themes of folk stories about Abbas the Great; The folk tale about the needle men's alley (Soozangarha alley) and the Afghan attack on Isfahan; The story of eggs and the folk tale of fortune-telling of girls have a high potential for the development of literary tourism with an emphasis on folk tales. In addition, for the main theme of mythology and literature, six sub-themes were identified, which were: Mitra (myth of light); Symbols of Good vs. Evil in Iranian mythology; Anahita who is referred to as "Goddess of Waters" in Iranian mythology; The love story of Khosrow Parviz and Isfahan's lover, Shekar Isfahani; Sacred trees in mythology; The stories of One Thousand and One Nights, Kalīla wa-Dimna, Amir Arsalan-e Namdar, etc. Lastly, six literary tourism routes of Isfahan City were identified with an emphasis on myths and folk stories