Distant Reader - author-brathwaiteRichard-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-23 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 33 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,621,564 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 49,138 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 94. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

may, one, will, hee, shall, yet, time, now, much, man, bee, many, god, whose, make, like, good, made, might, selfe, well, wee, must, miles, though, doe, love, great, men, life, ever, us, lord, shee, mee, first, see, never, let, owne, day, without, others, place, haue, state, honour, long, himselfe, two

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Times treasury, or, Academy for gentry laying downe excellent grounds, both divine and humane, in relation to sexes of both kindes : for their accomplishment in arguments of discourse, habit, fashion and happy progresse in their spirituall conversation : revised, corrected and inlarged with A ladies love-lecture : and a supplement entituled The turtles triumph : summing up all in an exquisite Character of honour / by R. Brathwait, Esq., The English gentleman containing sundry excellent rules or exquisite observations, tending to direction of every gentleman, of selecter ranke and qualitie; how to demeane or accommodate himselfe in the manage of publike or private affaires. By Richard Brathwait Esq., and Itinerarium totius Sacræ Scripturæ, or, The travels of the holy patriarchs, prophets, judges, kings, our Saviour Christ and his apostles, as they are related in the Old and New Testaments with a description of the towns and places to which they travelled, and how many English miles they stood from Jerusalem : also, a short treatise of the weights, monies, and measures mentioned in the Scriptures, reduced to our English valuations, quantity, and weight / collected out of the works of Henry Bunting ; and done into English by R.B..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

may bee, let us, many times, four miles, may read, saviour christ, ierusalem towards, english books, early english, eight miles, shall finde, one day, shall bee, hee will, books online, two miles, wee may, may seeme, every one, wee shall, shall find, long time, meane time, mine owne, will make, might bee, shall see, page images, six miles, creation partnership, text creation, twelve miles, returned back, must bee, thine owne, may appeare, right hand, hee may, every day, short time, good men, times past, will never, young man, ierusalem north, must tell, hee might, mine heart, shall never, mine eyes

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The prodigals teares. With a heavenly new yeeres gift sent to the soule; contayning many most zealous and comfortable prayers, with deuout meditations: both worthie the acceptance of all Christians, and their expence of time to peruse. By H. G. preacher of the most sacred Word of God Grand plvtoes remonstrance, or, The devill horn-mad at Roundheads and Brownists wherein His hellish Maiestie, by advice of his great counsell, Eacus, Minos & Radamanthus, with his beloved brethren, agdistis, beliall, incubus & succubus : is pleased to declare 1. how far he differs from round-head, rattle-head or prickeare : 2. his copulation with a Holy Sister : 3. his decre affection to Romish Catholikes and hate to Protestants : 4. his oration to the rebells., and A letter from a scholar in Oxford to his friend in the country shewing what progresse the visitors have made in the reformation of that university, and what it is that obstructs it..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

tcp, god, good, time, thy, thou, man, thee, lord, like, soule, state, selfe, court, world, nature, haue, church, love, father, shee, honour, gods, countrey, bee, prince, master, life, law, hee, hath, art, subject, sea, poet, mistresse, loue, king, great, english, earth, doe, conscience, city, woman, wee, vpon, vnto, temple, sunne

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be thy, and A spiritual spicerie containing sundrie sweet tractates of devotion and piety. By Ri. Brathwait, Esq. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

time, man, hee, miles, selfe, men, life, day, others, place, nothing, death, heart, love, shee, honour, name, way, none, things, state, world, soule, eyes, mee, end, times, earth, glory, eye, hand, art, nature, part, thy, t, thee, owne, affection, ▪, one, care, reason, hath, thence, friend, meanes, opinion, himselfe, power

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, was, are, have, were, had, being, did, make, made, see, let, bee, take, called, ''s, know, went, say, come, am, said, came, give, makes, do, become, found, done, having, brought, put, been, set, doe, tell, stood, live, haue, find, hold, bring, has, leave, heare, love, thought, taken, heard

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

thou, 〉, ◊, 〈, god, ●, lord, wee, hee, doe, bee, city, christ, ierusalem, hath, king, owne, mee, heaven, lesse, de, father, lib, c., hast, haue, town, thee, shee, loue, temple, earth, state, sea, son, court, yea, est, countrey, tcp, gods, ibid, world, mount, saviour, israel, himselfe, beene, church, land

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

his, i, it, he, their, her, they, my, you, him, them, your, our, thy, me, she, we, us, thee, themselves, himself, mine, one, its, yours, theirs, ours, vp, ''s, hers, ye, whereof, ha, hee, l, vvith, elias, us''d, thou, s, herself, yee, whosoever, vvhat, vnto, u, em, wr, whence, t''ane

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

such, many, more, other, good, great, much, true, first, little, best, same, most, least, better, long, own, high, sweet, last, full, whole, old, young, small, second, excellent, noble, former, rich, free, wise, like, glorious, pure, worthy, himselfe, present, short, strange, precious, new, constant, strong, holy, private, divine, common, happy, ancient

not, so, then, now, more, too, ever, never, well, thus, most, much, here, there, yet, as, up, out, rather, onely, long, therefore, very, first, only, also, even, forth, no, still, in, away, indeed, before, likewise, once, far, better, sometimes, that, together, is, sooner, off, all, hence, best, else, wholly, again

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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