f “De ortu Alexandri multiplicis Nektanebus ze diute Getihtet”

The article focuses on the account of Alexander’s conception and birth in medieval Alexander romances, analyzing different versions of the Nektanebus-episode in MHG texts in comparison with their common pretext: the Latin ‘Historia de preliis’. Besides showing the similarities and differences of these ‘prehistories’ of Alexander, I focus on the functioning of the Alexander romance as a genre, considering the Nektanebus-episode as a paradigm for the medieval Alexander tradition. Alexander texts and especially the ‘Historia’ carry a huge amount of inconsistencies, or rather allow for inconsistent interpretations, but it is exactly this inconsistency which is used by redactors and/or translators to create ‘new’ texts. They form ‘their Alexander’ in response to their particular source, mostly by disambiguation. Yet these attempts usually are restricted to single elements of the story and often create new narrative problems. Thus, the appalling quality—as George Cary and others might have suggested—not only of the medieval, but perhaps as well of the classical Alexander romance, could be seen as some sort of productive impetus and creative possibility. The Alexander tradition becomes a potentially infinite text helix, an entanglement of bequeathed irritation and irritating tradition.