Stephen L. Wailes received the AB from Harvard College and the PhD from Harvard University in Germanic Languages and Literatures. He did postgraduate study in medieval theology and church history at Harvard Divinity School, and has taught and conducted research in Germany with grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Fulbright Commission. He has written books on the thirteenth-century German writer Der Stricker, on medieval allegories of the parables of Jesus, and (with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities) on German dramatizations of the parable of Dives and Lazarus in the sixteenth century. His essays and articles range widely over medieval and Reformation literature of German-speaking Europe.