The aims of the present study were to explore how teachers in upper-secondary school choose and use literary texts and genres in their teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL), what their attitudes are towards the role of literature in reaching the learning objectives and what implications their textual choices have for  literature teaching in general. Six people participated in the study, three male and three female upper-secondary school teachers in Sweden with English as one of their main subjects. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with questions focusing on how the teachers use literary texts in order to teach English in the courses English 5, 6 and 7. The data were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The identified themes were teachers’ general attitudes to literature teaching, learning objectives taught implicitly through literature and teachers’ basis for literary choices. The main conclusions drawn from this study were that in most of these cases, factors such as relatability and degree of intelligible input overrode canonicity in EFL literature teaching.