Distant Reader - author-rushworthJohn-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 25 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 843,102 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 33,724 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 87. 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:

lord, king, majesty, parliament, shall, will, may, sir, house, time, great, mr, made, might, lordships, one, earl, kings, strafford, lords, majesties, words, law, now, commons, good, yet, answer, first, make, much, england, without, us, kingdom, give, man, council, duke, petition, two, ireland, cause, power, people, whether, must, many, concerning, done

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The Tryal of Thomas, Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, upon an impeachment of high treason by the Commons then assembled in Parliament, in the name of themselves and of all the Commons in England, begun in Westminster-Hall the 22th of March 1640, and continued before judgment was given until the 10th of May, 1641 shewing the form of parliamentary proceedings in an impeachment of treason : to which is added a short account of some other matters of fact transacted in both houses of Parliament, precedent, concomitant, and subsequent to the said tryal : with some special arguments in law relating to a bill of attainder / faithfully collected, and impartially published, without observation or reflection, by John Rushworth of Lincolnes-Inn, Esq., Historical collections of private passages of state Weighty matters in law. Remarkable proceedings in five Parliaments. Beginning the sixteenth year of King James, anno 1618. And ending the fifth year of King Charls, anno 1629. Digested in order of time, and now published by John Rushworth of Lincolns-Inn, Esq;, and An Abridgment of the late remonstrance of the army vvith some marginall attestations for the better understanding remembrance and judgement of the people : collected by speciall order for more publique satisfaction, and to undeceive the kingdome as to the false glosses by some put upon the said remonstrance printed..

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

sir iohn, sir thomas, sir george, king iames, thousand pounds, sir robert, high treason, lord deputy, sir william, lord keeper, lord mountnorris, late majesty, let us, honorable house, english books, early english, lord conway, great britain, majesties subjects, habeas corpus, lordships will, sir edward, george ratcliffe, books online, great seal, thomas earl, soveraign power, will give, thought fit, sir walter, will appear, french king, must needs, sir henry, magna charta, sir tho, late king, excellent majesty, commons house, every man, set forth, mean time, esq sir, per annum, secretary cook, next day, william lenthal, lord treasurer, last parliament, majesties reign

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A remonstrance from his excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax, and the armie under his command concerning their just and clear proceedings hitherto, in the behalfe of the Parliament, Kingdom, & themselves: and the evill and trecherous dealing they have found from the enemies to their own, and the Parliaments and kingdomes peace and freedome. Together with their present difficulties and dangers in relation thereunto: and their present resolutions thereupon. With the grounds of all these. By the appointment of his Excellency, and the generall councell of his army. Signed Jo. Rushworth, secretarie. A declaration from Sir Thomas Fairfax and the army under his command as it was humbly tendered to the Right Honourable the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament : as also to the Honourable the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and Common-Councell of the city of London : concerning the just and fundamentall rights and liberties of themselves and the kingdome : with some humble proposals and desires., and A vindication of the army under the command of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax concerning a pamphlet lately printed and published, intituled, Heads presented by the army to the Kings Majesty..

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:

army, parliament, honorable, commons, lord, majesty, kingdom, king, generall, general, committee, treaty, subjects, statute, sir, prince, power, petition, people, majesties, lordships, liberties, laws, law, kingdome, justice, house, horse, government, enemy, earl, council, charge, answer, act, witness, warrant, war, treason, town, subsidies, strafford, state, speech, speaker, soveraign, son, soldiers, ships, sea

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 king, and A letter sent to the Honorable William Lenthall Esquire, Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons, concerning the miraculous taking of Tiverton-Castle with the church 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, words, lordships, man, kings, hath, way, day, people, part, things, thing, p., men, charge, others, cause, subjects, nothing, case, order, matter, power, self, money, king, business, year, answer, place, religion, occasion, lordship, divers, course, persons, person, l., service, reason, message, manner, hand, end, purpose, times, opinion, years, hands, letter

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:

be, was, is, have, were, said, had, being, are, did, been, made, do, make, give, done, concerning, answered, take, say, sent, taken, put, given, come, having, according, came, know, asked, heard, desired, brought, read, desire, go, set, let, speak, think, hath, gave, see, delivered, called, am, appear, spoken, thought, committed

Proper Nouns

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

lord, king, majesty, parliament, sir, house, mr., strafford, earl, lords, law, commons, england, majesties, kingdom, council, duke, ireland, army, hath, god, petition, court, treason, spain, prince, kings, laws, justice, statute, war, committee, act, c., iohn, warrant, lordships, answer, state, government, london, deputy, thomas, esq, oath, power, e., church, commission, william

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, he, it, i, they, my, their, him, your, them, we, our, you, me, himself, us, themselves, her, she, its, theirs, ours, yours, one, mine, ye, thy, whereof, herself, vvith, thee, non, itself, u, tothis, ti, severall, ob, nulla, myself, ill, ian, burthensome, br, ''s

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?"

other, great, such, own, same, good, many, first, more, last, true, much, present, late, several, particular, whole, pleased, former, fit, next, new, little, best, most, general, free, further, ready, common, better, full, high, certain, like, honorable, private, second, able, humble, due, least, contrary, necessary, ill, greater, few, sufficient, ordinary, gracious

not, so, then, now, as, there, therefore, well, most, more, very, never, up, here, also, much, only, first, yet, in, ever, thereof, onely, out, again, further, far, together, thus, humbly, away, likewise, before, otherwise, long, therein, just, rather, afterwards, forth, over, no, formerly, down, too, accordingly, thereby, still, all, thereupon

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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