Medieval and Early Modern Murder: Legal, Literary and Historical Contexts

List of Illustrations and Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
Contributors ix
List of Abbreviations xiv
Introduction: Murder Most Foul / Larissa Tracy 1
I. MURDER ON TRIAL: JUSTICE, LAW AND SOCIETY
1. Secret Killing and Murder by Magic in the Law of Adomnán / Bridgette Slavin 19
2. Discursive Murders: The St. Brice’s Day Massacre, \'Beowulf\' and \'Morðor\' / Jay Paul Gates 47
3. Mourning Murderers in Medieval Jewish Law / Pinchas Roth 77
4. Treacherous Murder: Language and Meaning in French Murder Trials / Jolanta N. Komornicka 96
5. \'Mordre wol out\': Murder and Justice in Chaucer / Larissa Tracy 115
II. THE PUBLIC HERMENEUTICS OF MURDER: INTERPRETATION AND CONTEXT
6. Bringing Murder to Light: Death, Publishing and Performance in Icelandic Sagas / Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar 139
7. \'I Think This Bacon is Wearing Shoes\': Comedy and Murder in the Old French Fabliaux / Anne Latowsky 159
8. \'Chevaliers ocirre\': Manslaughter, Morality and Meaning in the \'Queste del Saint Graal\' / Lucas Wood 179
9. Murder, Manslaughter and Reputation: Killing in Malory’s \'Le Morte Darthur\' / Dwayne C. Coleman 206
10. Poisoning as a Means of State Assassination in Early Modern Venice / Matthew Lubin 227
11. Defamation, a Murder More Foul?: The \'Second Murder\' of Louis, Duke of Orleans (d. 1407) Reconsidered / Emily J. Hutchison 254
12. \'A general murther, an universal slaughter\': Strategies of Anti-Jesuit Defamation in Reporting Assassination in the Early Modern Period / Andrew McKenzie-McHarg 281
III. MURDER IN THE COMMUNITY: GENDER, YOUTH AND FAMILY
13. Negotiating Murder in the \'Historiae\' of Gregory of Tours / Jeffrey Doolittle 311
14. Poisoning, Killing and Murder in the \'Edictus Rothari\' / Thomas Gobbitt 333
15. Murder, Foul and Fair, in Shota Rustaveli’s \'The Man in the Panther Skin\' / G. Koolemans Beynen 350
16. A Multiple Poisoning in the City of Valencia: Sanxo Calbó’s Crime (1442) / Carmel Ferragud 371
17. A Case of Mariticide in Late Medieval France / Patricia Turning 395
18. Monstrous Un-Making: Maternal Infanticide and Female Agency in Early Modern England / Dianne Berg 417
19. Imps of Hell: Young People, Murder and the Early English Press / Ben Parsons 434
Conclusion / Hannah Skoda 456
Select Bibliography 468
Index 482