Distant Reader - author-brownThomas-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 2021-05-24 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 26 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,197,489 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 46,057 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:

xml, id, reg, lemma, pos, facs, pc, acp, one, will, great, much, made, time, man, make, may, well, good, de, self, never, av, sentence, now, unit, us, little, without, cs, mr, world, king, must, two, know, vvb, vvi, don, see, like, yet, pns, let, take, men, cc, first, every, say

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Wit for money, or, Poet Stutter a dialogue between Smith, Johnson, and Poet Stutter : containing reflections on some late plays and particularly, on Love for money, or, The boarding school., Physick lies a bleeding, or, The apothecary turned doctor a comedy, acted every day in most apothecaries shops in London : and more especially to be seen by those who are willing to be cheated, the first of April, every year : absolutely necessary for all persons that are sick, or may be sick / by Tho. Brown., and The whole comical works of Monsr. Scarron ... a great part of which never before in English / translated by Mr. Tho. Brown, Mr. Savage, and others..

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

pos acp, pc xml, unit sentence, pc unit, sentence xml, pos av, cs reg, pos vvb, vvi reg, pos vvi, vvb reg, pns reg, pos pns, cc reg, av reg, pos pn, pn reg, pos cc, po reg, pos po, nn reg, type contract, vvz reg, pos vvz, pos vvn, vvn reg, speaker xml, sp xml, pos cs, sp sp, rendition hi, pos vvd, vvd reg, pos crq, pos pno, pno reg, pos vmb, vmb reg, pc speaker, ab reg, join left, contract lemma, pos uh, lemma will, will pos, pos vvg, every thing, vvg reg, great deal, pos crd

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Wit for money, or, Poet Stutter a dialogue between Smith, Johnson, and Poet Stutter : containing reflections on some late plays and particularly, on Love for money, or, The boarding school. Physick lies a bleeding, or, The apothecary turned doctor a comedy, acted every day in most apothecaries shops in London : and more especially to be seen by those who are willing to be cheated, the first of April, every year : absolutely necessary for all persons that are sick, or may be sick / by Tho. Brown., and Familiar and courtly letters written by Monsieur Voiture to persons of the greatest honour, wit, and quality of both sexes in the court of France ; made English by Mr. Dryden, Tho. Cheek, Esq., Mr. Dennis, Henry Cromwel, Esq., Jos. Raphson, Esq., Dr. -, &c. ; with twelve select epistles out of Aristanetus, translated from the Greek ; some select letters of Pliny, Jun and Monsieur Fontanelle, translated by Mr. Tho. Brown ; and a collection of original letters lately written on several subjects, by Mr. T. Brown ; to which is added a collection of letters of friendship, and other occasional letters, written by Mr. Dryden, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. -, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Dennis, and other hands..

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, world, man, country, city, woman, town, people, men, life, lady, church, sir, poet, mr., king, house, father, love, letter, head, gentleman, day, wit, wife, soul, religion, reason, prince, madam, lord, husband, court, conscience, bays, xml, unit="sentence, type="contract2, thy, tei, speaker, son, reg="you, reg="what, reg="to, reg="the, reg="of, reg="i, reg="have, reg="for

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 a71267, and Seven new colloquies translated out of Erasmus Roterodamus as also The life of Erasmus / by Mr. Brown. 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:

a71267, xml, id - Wit for money, or, Poet Stutter a dialogue between Smith, Johnson, and Poet Stutter : containing reflections on some late plays and particularly, on Love for money, or, The boarding school.
great, time, don - The whole comical works of Monsr. Scarron ... a great part of which never before in English / translated by Mr. Tho. Brown, Mr. Savage, and others.
mr, bays, man - The reasons of the new converts taking the oaths to the present government in a dialogue / by the author of the Reasons of Mr. Bay''s conversion.
funeral, hobson, 1693 - A description of Mr. D-n''s funeral a poem.
gibbet, halter, scuffle - The clarret drinkers song, or, The good fellows design by a person of quality.

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?":

xml, pc, p, time, pos="n1, t, self, man, pos="n2, nothing, cs, thing, reason, day, people, part, way, pos="vvi, place, things, person, body, tho, mind, men, life, wou''d, manner, one, rest, others, occasion, years, name, friend, side, bays, order, id="a29785, death, days, pleasure, opinion, heart, eyes, hand, persons, care, woman, hands

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:

was, had, is, be, have, were, are, made, do, been, has, make, being, did, am, know, see, take, having, let, came, give, lemma="i, say, find, come, think, found, tell, told, pos="pns, go, done, went, said, put, took, thought, gave, believe, sent, set, ''s, taken, left, got, does, leave, saw, knew

Proper Nouns

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

w, id="a71267, facs="a71267, pos="acp, xml, pos="j, king, pos="vvb, unit="sentence, don, de, mr., pos="d, prince, world, lemma="the, reg="the, pos="pn, pos="cc, lemma="be, pc, lemma="and, lemma="a, madam, queen, reg="i, reg="of, lemma="of, reg="and, duke, pos="av, reg="to, reg="a, man, pos="vvz, house, father, men, lemma="you, sir, pos="vvn, /p, sp, speaker, court, pos="vvi, pos="po, reg="you, lady, 〉

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?"

i, he, his, you, it, him, her, they, my, their, me, she, your, them, we, our, id="a29785, himself, us, themselves, ''em, its, thy, one, herself, thee, yours, em, mine, myself, itself, yourself, ''s, ours, theirs, hers, l, ourselves, ye, shou''d, us''d, lemma="golin, ay, iu, ●, beg''d, w, lemma="throw, nay, ee''n

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?"

great, other, same, good, pos="n1, more, own, little, much, such, many, last, first, several, true, least, old, young, certain, better, pos="av, able, best, short, new, long, ill, greatest, poor, whole, next, happy, most, full, reg="for, present, fine, few, greater, dear, very, less, small, particular, late, reg="be, ready, humble, extraordinary, mean

not, so, as, very, never, then, now, more, well, up, only, most, out, much, too, ever, still, here, there, always, therefore, yet, no, n''t, soon, thus, long, enough, off, even, before, together, down, again, away, rather, likewise, immediately, far, often, in, all, perhaps, just, over, once, sometimes, however, afterwards, indeed

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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