If Pfaffe (Priest) Lamprecht's Tobias (circa 1145) had survived in full, it would have been no more than a minor product of a long tradition of Bible translation and adaptation that reached back almost to the beginning of German literature; but his Alexander (circa 1150) signaled the dawn of a new era on which it, directly or indirectly, exerted a significant and manifold influence. It was the first German work to make use of French literature, which was to provide subject matter and literary conventions for the Hohenstaufen Renaissance, and it was the first of many narratives to use classical figures and settings. It was also innovative with respect to its secular hero and tone and its emphasis on the childhood education of a future monarch. Indeed, while revealing a pronounced theological tendency, Lamprecht's Alexander marks the beginning of a development in which German fiction escaped the domination of the...