The late medieval verse romance Wilhelm von Österreich is characterized by many implicit and explicit intertextual references. Its author, Johann von Würzburg, remains elusive behind contrasting narrative masks and switches between them: on the one hand, a narrator who is in constant critical dialogue with literary traditions and sees himself as coequal with the ancient masters, on the other a humble storyteller who is personally affected by the story and regularly professes his own artistic ineptitude. It is the thesis of this article that when taken in combination with narrative strategies such as the modesty topos, Johann’s use of different narrative personae enables us to make certain observations about the writer behind them. An analysis of selected passages allows more specific interrogation of Johann’s conception of himself as a ›writer of the second generation‹. Does he view himself as disadvantaged in comparison to predecessors such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, or is he not rather a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, who is actually superior to them?