“Jody Enders’ Murder by Accident offers an extraordinary amalgam of historical work and contemporary theory. We have here, as in her earlier work, richly detailed evocations of the social world of medieval spectacle. But we also have the theoretical and ethical concerns that her historical readings raise brought front and center. This book engages issues critical to anyone interested in art or in accountability (legal and moral)—that is, all of us.”

Julie Stone Peters, Harvard University

“Enders is a remarkable scholar who uses the intellectual freedoms accorded to theater historians to the fullest. Not constrained by the limitations of historians or literary scholars, she moves easily between fact and fiction, medieval and modern. But what will always delight readers of Enders’s work is the sheer pleasure of her style, her insights, and her asides.”

Barbara Hanawalt, Ohio State University

“Once again Jody Enders has given us a brilliantly new perspective on the premodern dramatic tradition. In its graceful recovery of intention as the very ground of theatrical knowledge, Murder by Accident represents a signal contribution to some of the most pressing questions in the humanities today.”

Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia

"This work fully embraces the old and the new and in so doing suggests . . . that we are not as far removed from medieval France as we think. . . . Moving fluidly from medieval texts to modern representations, the author forces us to consider the absolute impassivity of the audience, where the spectacle of reality television and the evening news replay versions of medieval stage deaths."

Choice