JEROLD C. FRAKES is Professor of German and Comparative Literature and part of the Associate Faculty in Classics at the University of Southern California, USA. He has authored three books: The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages: The Boethian Tradition, The Politics of Interpretation: Alterity and Ideology in Old Yiddish Studies, and most recently, Brides and Doom: Gender, Property and Power in Medieval German Women's Epic. He is the editor of the anthology Early Yiddish Texts, 1100-1750.