Women’s Writing and Women’s Reading: Gender, Bibliographic Paths and Trends

This work is based on some consi- derations about the possibility of understan- ding the semantic eld of femininity as a spe- ci c genre of writing, with speci c sub-genres related to themes and styles of expression. It takes as reference studies in Semiotics and Linguistics that allow us to understand the female as a “nebula of meaning”, which does not match codi ed and canonized expressive styles. Therefore, the female arises more like a particular interpretation of the texts, a po- int of view that emerges from the practice of reading.On the basis of these considerations, this pa- per reviews the main theoretical approaches on women’s reading, circumscribing three ma- cro-areas: those of Gender studies, Historical research, and statistical analysis of Sociology related to the book market.The nal results seem to reinforce the hypo- thesis that femininity is characterized by a particular focus on the vision and on the pos- sibility of translating the perceptive world in writing, with speci c attention to the context of reading.