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The figure of the rebel of the 1950s shaped the imagination of the American post-war generation. Yet the notoriety of the rebel resides uneasily beside that of the conformist, ironically one of the other central figures of the decade. This collection of essays, which originated at an international conference in Trier, Germany, in 2005, sets out to explain the multiple representations of rebellion and affirmation in 1950s American culture. It explores the ways in which rebellion was ‘contained’ and also disruptive during this pivotal decade of American ascendance on the global scene. In a series of essays written by prominent American Studies scholars in the United States and Germany, the collection explores the meaning of rebellion in the 1950s and its role in shaping theological, literary and cultural discourses.

This revionist study of Samuel Clemens's literary aesthetics and politics takes its ultimate justification from a maxim by the author himself. It asks readers, as Clemens did in his preface 'The Innocents Abroad', to read with their 'own eyes' instead of eyes blurred by postmodern and modern mainstream discourses. The plea for independent critical reading and thinking is closely related to the study's claim that the continuing debate about the nature of Samuel Clemens's legacy can only be redirected fruitfully once we readjust the biased discursive frame within which his writings have been discussed. In Twain studies, but also in literary studies at large, many of the new findings about the complexities inherent in oral discourse habe not yet been integrated fully into critical theory. It is time that we give orality the alert ears and eyes it deserves.

Fragmented Urban Images fuses urban studies and literary criticism to examine the city image in American fiction in the twentieth century. The study proposes a reassessment of the complex interaction between society, city, and novel. It focuses particularly on the ways in which the diversity of fragmented experience and the ideological bias in the assessment of urban condition reappear in the modernist city images. The study finds that, contrary to appearances, cities can hardly be called agents in modernity. As expressions of fundamental divisions in society, they are crucial catalysts, however. Eight influential city novels are interpreted to provide a distinct view of the interrelation between fragmented experience, fictional perception, and urban thought in modernity: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane, Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, Native Son by Richard Wright, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.