This volume focuses on queer aspects of literary lives, which result from or cause various in/securities. By focusing on moments of irritation, or queer instances, the subjects of investigation challenge established norms, hierarchies, and ideologies. At stake are one-dimensional fixations of meaning, procedures of heteronormative standardization as well as the intellectual foundations of their legitimacy.

In nine chapters, the contributors investigate materials from the 17th century and the Thirty Years' War (e.g. Grimmelshausen, Lohenstein) as well as the 21st (Kehlmann, Steidele), in which techniques of self-assertion and safeguarding are devised. The literary texts unhinge established societal and epistemological orders, on the one hand by pointing at the inflexibility and limitations of traditional orientation markers of the self, and on the other by the exposing abusive, discriminative, and unacceptable power structures of the day.