Christoph Lorey and John L. Plews, eds.
Queering the Canon: Defying Sights in German Literature and Culture
Columbia: Camden House, 1998. Pp. 498. $60.00
Reviewed by Elisabeth Krimmer

Although Germanistik is still considered by many a stronghold of textual orthodoxy, the winds of change have long begun to affect even this notoriously conservative discipline. As departments of German are transformed into German Studies departments, Queer Theory is making its entry into the canonical heartland. From Alice Kuzniar’s Outing Goethe and His Age to Robert Tobin’s recently published Warm Brothers, scholars of German are turning their attention to con­structions of gender and sexuality. Building on these investigations of individual authors and periods, Chris Lorey and John L. Plews’s anthology Queering the Canon now situates queerness across the entire field of German Studies. The impressive scope and generally high quality of the contributions make their new volume a particularly enriching addition to this newly emerging trend.

Rather than relegating queerness to the margin, Lorey and Plews locate it in the heart of the canon itself. They promote an understanding of queerness which, while it is committed to issues of sexual preference, does not remain limited to them. Their definition of queerness encompasses all forms of deviation from heteronormativity. As such queerness must necessarily be an integral element of any process of canon formation since the canon—in order to constitute itself—is dependent upon the marginalization and exclusion of that which transgresses against its standards. Though Lorey and Plews are right to insist on such interdependence and correctly refer to the historical variability of the canon, their assessment of “the clandestine rule of the canon that the barred become the standard” (xvi) appears somewhat overly optimistic to a scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women writers whose texts have remained curiously unaffected by such reconfigurations among the “great works” of Western civilization. Queering the Canon, however, does not reify established systems of literary valuation. Rather, it is a highly sophisticated and much needed intervention that expands and redefines the canon from within its center.

Queering the Canon presents an amazingly variegated palette whose individual colors not only speak to each other but also fall into coherent groups. The volume covers a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from a discussion of Queer Theory to musicology and art, and from lesser-known texts from the Middle Ages to twentieth-century literature and film. The first section is devoted to German history and thought. The stage is set by Holger A. Pausch’s highly informative discussion of the history, status, and trends in Queer Theory, followed by Angela Taeger’s analysis of the interrelation between nineteenth-century discourses of homosexuality, demography, and the development of the nation state. Section One also contains a discussion of the concept of inversion in turn-of-the-century musicology and sexology (Martin Scherzinger and Neville Hoad) and an intellectually intriguing critique of Judith Butler’s work (Evelyn Annuß).

The second section, Queering German Literature, tackles texts by both canonical authors and widely neglected writers. The Middle Ages are represented by Martin Blum’s article on transvestism and queer desire in Dietrich von der Glezze’s Der Borte. David G. John approaches Goethe’s gender-bender Margarete von Parma through an analysis of the production history of Egmont. Silke R. Falkner provides a stimulating reading of Faust II, focusing on Mephisto’s homosexual cravings for the angels in the Interment scene, in which Falkner sees a possible source of redemption for Goethe’s devilish agent. Robert Tobin’s excellent article addresses the question of same-sex desire in Friedrich Schiller’s work, and Harry Oosterhuis’s eloquent and competent contribution investigates homo­eroticism in the works of Thomas and Klaus Mann. Lesbian desire forms the focus of articles on the German women writers Anna Elisabet Weirauch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Christa Reinig, Regina Nössler, and Elfriede Jelinek. The third and final section, Queering German Culture, contains discussions of post–World War II cinema, especially the work of Rosa von Praunheim, Frank Ripploh (Taxi to the Toilet), and Sönke Wortmann (Maybe ... Maybe Not).

Without doubt, Lorey and Plews have assembled an intriguing and stimulating array of research. The lacunae in their collection, for example, the absence of articles on lesbian relationships in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature, cannot be laid at their door but simply represent the current state of research and, hopefully, point the way for future projects. All in all, Queering the Canon is a refreshing and thought-provoking volume that provides groundbreaking research and comprehensive information on a surprising variety of topics. One hopes that Lorey and Plews’s anthology will itself be accepted into the canon of secondary literature.