Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier ed. by Eric Heyne (review)

260Rocky Mountain Review which the feminine figures as an empty sign that can be filled with the reflections of masculine hegemony on itself" (12). She clearly believes, too, that modern critical models can effectively "illuminate texts of all periods without betraying their cultural specificity" (12). Separate chapters are devoted to analyzing how rape is portrayed in four different literary forms: female saints' lives, Arthurian romance, the Roman de Renart, and the pastourelle. The fifth chapter examines courtroom records. In each instance Gravdal makes a compelling case for proving that the medieval authors wrote about rape in ways that distracted a reader from considering the inherent victimization of the woman. The female body becomes a semiotic representation of medieval politics (pastourelle) or the vehicle for a male study of feudal jurisprudence (Renart). It provides a means of proving a man's heroism (romance) or, conversely, his vulnerability to sexual transgression. Situations of rape and attempted rape are framed as chivalric dilemmas, political tactics or military strategies; and they also offer acceptable opportunities to practice voyeurism. Gravdal strengthens her argument by including a case for comparison in the first chapter—that of the hagiographie works of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. This female author used the narrative device of rape but portrayed her women characters as neither complicitous, helpless, seductive nor sinful. Hrotsvitha's point ofview is firmly that of the woman, for whom virginity is a positive attribute to be preserved. Gravdal supports her discussions with scholarship that is wide-ranging and current. She has included a bibliography and extensive notes. Indeed, the richness of the notes may well be the only negative aspect of this truly stimulating study: the engrossing discussion carried on in several of them (especially in the few that contain pointed challenges to specific traditional opinions) occasionally tends to distract one's attention from the main text. Readers will appreciate that English translations follow the French passages cited and that the author contextualizes the works discussed and explains the terms she uses. Her courteous attention to such details will allow non-specialists to follow her arguments without any difficulty. Gravdal's work suggests new directions for inquiry among medieval literary topics and should prove a pleasure for feminist scholars, for students and specialists in French literature, and for medievalists interested in stretching their perceptions. JOAN M. WEST University ofIdaho ERIC HEYNE, ed. Desert, Garden, Margin, Range: Literature on the American Frontier. New York: Twayne, 1992. 182 p. 1 his collection focuses on the frontier not only as a geographical place but as a concept. Although there are references to the familiar metaphors, Book Reviews261 garden and desert, iconographie terms based on capitalistic distinctions of the land's ability to produce, Heyne and the essayists focus more of their attention on margin, Heyne's term for the line or space between, and in the process contribute to our increasing understanding of the margin in American literature. In Section One, essayists focus on canonical works; in Section Two, they focus on noncanonical works that illustrate the variants of margin and range in American literature. In his introductory essay, Heyne points out that the frontier was created by Easterners who wrote about the frontier (not always the West). He discusses the frontier as the place of the Other, a place for the unconscious aggressions that exist alongside the Edenic, profitable garden. Not much of this is new, but Heyne does a fine job of establishing a clear intellectual framework for the essays that follow. In the two most interesting essays of the first section, Louise K. Barnett and James Barszcz focus on the language of marginality in familiar texts. Barnett, in her discussion of Cooper, asserts that, in Cooper's works, the perfect correspondence of language is possible only in the wilderness, away from societys flawed order and that only Natty Bumppo's speech is free of barriers to truth. In "Hawthorne, Emerson, and the Forms of the Frontier," Barszcz discusses language as a border of perspective in the short story "Main Street" and in the forest scene of The Scarlet Letter. He points out that in Hawthorne's world view, it is impossible to get outside the acculturated world to realize...