Medieval authorship is characterized by parameters fundamentally different from early modern or modern parameters. On the basis of the popular matter of Alexander, this article investigates into the different ideas that individual authors connected with their writing activity, into how they thought about themselves and what image they created of themselves, and into what traditions they positioned themselves in. This paper considers the Latin text of Archipresbyter Leo of Naples and that of Walter of Châtillon, as well as Lamprecht’s and Rudolf von Ems’s Middle High German Alexander verses.