Distant Reader - author-perkinsWilliam-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 27 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 2,707,209 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 100,267 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 95. 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:

god, christ, must, man, haue, may, vs, will, vnto, first, men, gods, faith, good, shall, yet, therefore, things, church, life, one, doe, word, sinne, himselfe, vpon, now, lord, true, hee, wee, bee, saith, sinnes, owne, though, onely, two, heart, come, made, euery, also, death, make, secondly, time, grace, many, holy

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A golden chaine: or The description of theologie containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods word. A view whereof is to be seene in the table annexed. Hereunto is adioyned the order which M. Theodore Beza vsed in comforting afflicted consciences., A godly and learned exposition of Christs Sermon in the Mount: preached in Cambridge by that reuerend and iudicious diuine M. William Perkins. Published at the request of his exequutors by Th. Pierson preacher of Gods word. Whereunto is adioyned a twofold table: one, of speciall points here handled; the other, of choise places of Scripture here quoted, and A commentarie or exposition, vpon the fiue first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians: penned by the godly, learned, and iudiciall diuine, Mr. W. Perkins. Now published for the benefit of the Church, and continued with a supplement vpon the sixt chapter, by Rafe Cudworth Bachelour of Diuinitie.

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

holy ghost, vnto vs, vnto god, let vs, wee must, gods word, euery man, sauiour christ, paul saith, euery one, man may, two things, good conscience, iesus christ, wee may, set downe, eternall life, god will, christ iesus, life euerlasting, must bee, god himselfe, true faith, may see, good workes, may bee, wee haue, gods church, must haue, haue beene, three things, teach vs, new testament, gods children, true god, must labour, christ saith, man must, true religion, must needes, among vs, vpon vs, may haue, right hand, good things, shall haue, haue done, please god, gods spirit, gods will

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are M. Perkins, his Exhortation to repentance, out of Zephaniah preached in 2. sermons in Sturbridge Faire. Together with two treatises of the duties and dignitie of the ministrie: deliuered publiquely in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge. With a preface præfixed touching the publishing of all such workes of his as are to be expected: with a catalogue of all the perticulers [sic] of them, diligently perused and published, by a preacher of the word. The whole duty of man, containing a practical table of the Ten commandments wherein the sins forbidden, and the duties commanded, or implied are clearly discovered / by famous Mr. Will. Perkins., and An abridgement of the whole body of divinity extracted from the learned works of that ever-famous and reverend divine, Mr. William Perkins / by Tho. Nicols..

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:

god, lord, christ, church, tcp, gods, man, psal, scripture, sauiour, iesus, ghost, prophet, law, iewes, gospell, act, dauid, christian, angels, rom, prophets, paul, papists, matth, father, apostle, testament, spirit, king, sonne, satan, magistrate, iohn, haue, epistle, saints, pope, moses, ministers, israelites, gospel, gen., diuell, deuill, churches, chap, apostles, abraham, word

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 god, and The true gaine more in worth then all the goods in the world. 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?":

man, men, faith, things, life, word, sinne, heart, sinnes, death, time, grace, world, thing, selues, themselues, conscience, nature, reason, law, power, place, day, words, people, part, hee, doctrine, spirit, hearts, himselfe, nothing, children, religion, cause, soule, heauen, meanes, way, selfe, father, euery, church, saluation, workes, will, bodie, name, manner, vse

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, are, was, were, haue, had, made, come, make, see, say, vnto, did, let, said, take, bee, called, doe, done, know, set, do, hath, being, put, neuer, according, vse, seeing, beleeue, liue, giue, beeing, learne, teach, thinke, consider, pray, taken, receiue, bring, euen, stand, taught, vpon, receiued, makes, keepe

Proper Nouns

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

god, christ, gods, lord, haue, church, thou, wee, doe, hath, 〉, 〈, ◊, paul, c., owne, vs, againe, holy, cor, hee, bee, loue, ans, rom, himselfe, mans, christs, ghost, yea, euery, vp, sinne, ye, iesus, downe, spirit, iewes, dauid, ●, iohn, father, moses, act, abraham, satan, sauiour, gen., gospel, i.

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?"

it, his, he, they, we, our, them, their, him, i, my, you, thy, me, her, your, thee, she, vp, himself, ours, vnto, one, mine, theirs, us, ye, its, yours, themselves, thēselues, elias, whereof, s, yee, hee, f, ●, thou, wil, ian, o, l, hers, foorth, cā, 〈, u, trye, thē

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?"

good, true, first, other, such, many, same, second, great, more, much, haue, holy, whole, third, wicked, common, particular, last, false, himselfe, former, new, saith, able, dead, outward, least, most, better, very, right, little, full, present, godly, old, perfect, greater, christian, sufficient, priuate, own, excellent, like, free, lawfull, best, doth, fourth

not, so, then, therefore, first, now, thus, here, also, onely, secondly, vs, yet, more, that, is, as, most, thereof, thirdly, namely, out, well, much, away, hence, forth, very, rather, further, there, vpon, no, alone, lastly, indeed, especially, together, only, in, all, otherwise, off, long, thereby, before, partly, often, truly, still

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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