Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0305.  Monday, 22 April 1996.

(1)     From:   Jeff Powers-Beck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Apr 96 11:55:27 EDT
        Subj:   Funeral Elegy Project

(2)     From:   Richard J Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 22 Apr 1996 09:40:16 -0700
        Subj:   Re: Funeral Elegy


(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jeff Powers-Beck <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Monday, 22 Apr 96 11:55:27 EDT
Subject:        Funeral Elegy Project

                          PROJECT W.S.

Did he or didn't he?

That was the question taken up by English 4957/5957, a course on literature and
computers at East Tennessee State University. The special topics course,
entitled "Poetry, Print, and Hypertext," participated in the Internet debate as
to whether William Shakespeare wrote "A Funeral Elegy for Master William
Peter." Recently, Professor Donald Foster of Vassar College made national
headlines for using a computer database called Shaxicon to attribute the poem
to Shakespeare.

The seven ETSU students in the course studied the 1612 poem, corresponded with
Foster via e-mail, and then answered three questions in a World Wide Web
project: Was the elegist W.S. the dramatist William Shakespeare?  Is "A Funeral
Elegy" a significant or interesting poem?  And, if Shakespeare wrote the elegy,
what does it say about his life and work?

In addition to answers to these questions, Project W.S. offers the complete
text of the 578-line poem, the students' commentary on some fifty lines of the
poem, photographs of the students, other graphics, and a thorough bibliography.
The student Internet project is located at
http://www.east-tenn-st.edu/~english/projws.htm.

Dr. Jeffrey Powers-Beck, Assistant Professor of English and the instructor of
English 4957/5957, serves as Project W.S. Editor. For the students and Dr.
Powers-Beck, Project W.S. was certainly not _Much Ado About Nothing_ or one of
_Love's Labour's Lost_.

E-mail responses to Project W.S. may be addressed to
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard J Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Monday, 22 Apr 1996 09:40:16 -0700
Subject:        Re: Funeral Elegy

Someone informs me that Don Foster has more experience with computer programs
than Ward Elliott. In that case, I don't know what excuse can be made for
Shaxicon, and I am sorry I called it inexperience, but you will understand that
it looks so much like inexperience that I was fooled. My apologies to Don
Foster. There must be some other reason that Shaxicon is so stupid about the
Funeral Elegy.

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