This work studies in detail a heretofore much neglected aned aspect of German literature. This collection of twenty-three essays sets its sights on the points of queerness, marginality, and alterity already present within the German canon and introduces further difference and deviation in the form of openly gay Germanliterature in order to promote the always-ongoing shift in cultural representation. Queering the Canon provides new analyses, from queer perspectives, of texts by authors whose names are familiar to canonical lists, including Goethe, Schiller, Thomas and Klaus Mann, Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Reinig, and Elfriede Jelinek. It also makes welcome room for discussions of literary works that have seldom received scholarly attention.