에피 타프 (Epitaph), 무덤에 대한 구절 또는 산문의 비문; 그리고 확장하여 무덤에 새겨 져있는 것처럼 쓰여진 것. 아마도 가장 오래된 생존은 석관과 관에 쓰여진 고대 이집트인 들일 것입니다. 고대 그리스어 비문은 종종 상당한 문학적 관심을 가지고 있으며, 감정이 깊고 부드럽고, 풍부하고 다양하며 표현력이 뛰어납니다. 후일의 많은 비문들은 산만하지만, 그들은 보통 구절에있다.
가장 친숙한 서신 중 하나는 서모 필라에의 영웅 들인시오 스 시모니 데스 (기원 556 ~ 468 년경)에 속한 것들이다.
스파르타 인에게 말하라
그들의 법에 따라 우리는 거짓말을합니다.
로마의 서신은 그리스어와 달리 거의 변이가없는 사실에 대한 기록 외에는 아무것도 포함하지 않았다. 일반적으로 발견되는 비문은“땅이 그대에게 빛을 비출 수있다”입니다. 이에 대한 만족스러운 역전은 영국 건축가 존 밴 브러 경의 아벨 에반스 (Abel Evans) (1679–1737)의 서신에서 볼 수 있습니다.
땅에 엎드려! 그는
그대에게 많은 짐을 뿌렸다.
많은 로마의 서신에는 무덤을 위반해야하는 사람에 대한 비난이 포함되었습니다. 윌리엄 셰익스피어의 무덤에서 비슷한 비난이 발견되었습니다.
좋은 친구, 예수를 위해
여기에 동봉 된 먼지를 파는 것;
Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.
The oldest existing epitaphs in Britain are those of the Roman occupiers and are, of course, in Latin, which continued for many centuries to be the preferred language for epitaphs. The earliest epitaphs in English churches are usually a simple statement of name and rank, with the phrase hic jacet (“here lies”). In the 13th century, French came into use (on, for example, the tomb of Henry III at Westminster). The use of English began about the middle of the 14th century, but as late as 1776, Samuel Johnson, asked to write an English epitaph for Oliver Goldsmith, replied that he would never consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription. A familiar 18th-century epitaph was the one of 12 lines ending Thomas Gray’s “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.” Perhaps the most-noted modern epitaph was that written by William Butler Yeats for himself in “Under Ben Bulben”:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
Most of the epitaphs that have survived from before the Protestant Reformation were inscribed upon brasses. By Elizabethan times, however, epitaphs upon stone monuments, in English, became much more common and began to assume a more literary character. Thomas Nashe tells how, by the end of the 16th century, the writing of verse epitaphs had become a trade. Many of the best-known epitaphs are primarily literary memorials, not necessarily intended to be placed on a tomb. Among the finest are those by William Browne, Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, John Milton, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Alexander Pope wrote several epitaphs; they inspired one of the few monographs on the subject—Samuel Johnson’s examination of them in The Universal Visiter for May 1756.
Semiliteracy often produces epitaphs that are comic through grammatical accident—for example, “Erected to the memory of / John MacFarlane / Drowned in the Water of Leith / By a few affectionate friends.” Far more common, though, are deliberately witty epitaphs, a type abounding in Britain and the United States in the form of acrostics, palindromes, riddles, and puns on names and professions. Benjamin Franklin’s epitaph for himself plays on his trade as a printer, hoping that he will “appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author”; and that of the antiquary Thomas Fuller has the inscription “Fuller’s Earth.” Many offer some wry comment, such as John Gay’s epitaph:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it.
The epitaph was also seen as an opportunity for epigrammatic satire, as in the Earl of Rochester’s lines on Charles II: “He never said a foolish thing / Nor ever did a wise one.”
The art of the epitaph was largely lost in the 20th century. Some notable examples of humorous epitaphs were suggested, however, by the 20th-century writer Dorothy Parker; they include “I told you I was sick” and “If you can read this, you’re standing too close.”
