New Research Project: Shakespeare's Influence on Memorial Culture

[AI-Generated Summary]: A £450,000 Leverhulme Trust-funded research project at the University of Exeter will explore Shakespeare’s influence on epitaph writing and memorial culture from the 18th century onwards. Led by Professor Philip Schwyzer and Dr Elizabeth Williamson from the Digital Humanities Lab, the three-year study will use advanced pattern-matching software to identify Shakespearean quotations and inspirations in epitaphs, obituaries, and war grave inscriptions. The project will particularly examine the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s dataset of 400,000+ personal inscriptions, tracing how Shakespeare’s secular words became embedded in funerary practices across the anglophone world, from American headstones to the graves of Shelley and Keats in Italy.