Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Illustrations and Tables vii
4. Acknowledgements viii
5. Contributors ix
6. List of Abbreviations xiv
7. Introduction: Murder Most Foul 1
8. I MURDER ON TRIAL: JUSTICE, LAW AND SOCIETY
9. 1 Secret Killing and Murder by Magic in the Law of Adomnán 19
10. 2 Discursive Murders: The St Brice’s Day Massacre, Beowulf and Morðor 47
11. 3 Mourning Murderers in Medieval Jewish Law 77
12. 4 Treacherous Murder: Language and Meaning in French Murder Trials 96
13. 5 ‘Mordre wol out’: Murder and Justice in Chaucer 115
14. II THE PUBLIC HERMENEUTICS OF MURDER: INTERPRETATION AND CONTEXT
15. 6 Bringing Murder to Light: Death, Publishing and Performance in Icelandic Sagas 139
16. 7 ‘I Think This Bacon is Wearing Shoes’: Comedy and Murder in the Old French Fabliaux 159
17. 8 ‘Chevaliers ocirre’: Manslaughter, Morality and Meaning in the Queste del Saint Graal 179
18. 9 Murder, Manslaughter and Reputation: Killing in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur 206
19. 10 Poisoning as a Means of State Assassination in Early Modern Venice 227
20. 11 Defamation, a Murder More Foul?: The ‘Second Murder’ of Louis, Duke of Orleans (d. 1407) Reconsidered 254
21. 12 ‘A general murther, an universal slaughter’: Strategies of Anti-Jesuit Defamation in Reporting Assassination in the Early Modern Period 281
22. III MURDER IN THE COMMUNITY: GENDER, YOUTH AND FAMILY
23. 13 Negotiating Murder in the Historiae of Gregory of Tours 311
24. 14 Poisoning, Killing and Murder in the Edictus Rothari 333
25. 15 Murder, Foul and Fair, in Shota Rustaveli’s The Man in the Panther Skin 350
26. 16 A Multiple Poisoning in the City of Valencia: Sanxo Calbó’s Crime (1442) 371
27. 17 A Case of Mariticide in Late Medieval France 395
28. 18 Monstrous Un-Making: Maternal Infanticide and Female Agency in Early Modern England 417
29. 19 Imps of Hell: Young People, Murder and the Early English Press 434
30. Conclusion 456
31. Select Bibliography 468
32. Index 482