Distant Reader - subject-america-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 16 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 940,982 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 62,732 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:

one, great, many, haue, hee, called, two, also, men, like, first, king, made, sea, yet, much, hundred, time, may, three, god, people, will, part, now, man, day, good, place, name, others, make, long, thousand, another, bee, land, vnto, shall, south, north, de, water, without, world, new, parts, vpon, little, came

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Purchas his pilgrimage. Or Relations of the vvorld and the religions obserued in all ages and places discouered, from the Creation vnto this present Contayning a theologicall and geographicall historie of Asia, Africa, and America, with the ilands adiacent. Declaring the ancient religions before the Floud ... The fourth edition, much enlarged with additions, and illustrated with mappes through the whole worke; and three whole treatises annexed, one of Russia and other northeasterne regions by Sr. Ierome Horsey; the second of the Gulfe of Bengala by Master William Methold; the third of the Saracenicall empire, translated out of Arabike by T. Erpenius. By Samuel Purchas, parson of St. Martins by Ludgate, London., The naturall and morall historie of the East and West Indies Intreating of the remarkable things of heaven, of the elements, mettalls, plants and beasts which are proper to that country: together with the manners, ceremonies, lawes, governments, and warres of the Indians. Written in Spanish by the R.F. Ioseph Acosta, and translated into English by E.G., and An epitome of Mr. John Speed''s theatre of the empire of Great Britain And of his prospect of the most famous parts of the world. In this new edition are added, the despciptions of His Majesties dominions abroad, viz. New England, New York, 226 Carolina, Florida, 251 Virginia, Maryland, 212 Jamaica, 232 Barbados, 239 as also the empire of the great Mogol, with the rest of the East-Indies, 255 the empire of Russia, 266 with their respective descriptions..

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

two hundred, three hundred, one hundred, hundred thousand, haue beene, south sea, great store, fiue hundred, great river, like vnto, one thousand, new spaine, let vs, hundred miles, great part, three thousand, euery one, foure hundred, chief city, haue seene, hundred leagues, new england, three dayes, wee haue, chief cities, new world, two thousand, hundred yeeres, may bee, burning zone, every one, many times, ten thousand, one day, red sea, king henry, one side, five hundred, set forth, long time, euery day, thousand men, haue heard, shall bee, yeeres old, dayes iourney, now called, chiefe citie, right hand, six hundred

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are An historical & geographical description of the great country & river of the Amazones in America. Drawn out of divers authors, and reduced into a better forme; with a mapp of the river, and of its provinces, being that place which Sr Walter Rawleigh intended to conquer and plant, when he made his voyage to Guiana. / Written in French by the Count of Pagan, and dedicated to Cardinall Mazarine, in order to a conquest by the Cardinals motion to be undertaken. And now translated into English by William Hamilton, and humbly offered to his Majesty, as worthy his consideration. A description of the new world. or, America islands and continent: and by what people those regions are now inhabited. And what places are there desolate and without inhabitants. And the bays, rivers, capes, forts, cities and their latitudes, the seas on their coasts: the trade, winds, the North-west passage, and the commerce of the English nation, as they were all in the year 1649. Faithfully described for information of such of his countrey as desire intelligence of these perticulars. By George Gardyner of Peckham, in the country of Surrey Esq., and America painted to the life. A true history of the originall undertakings of the advancement of plantations into those parts, with a perfect relation of our English discoveries ... 1628. to 1658. declaring the forms of their government, policies, religions, manners, customes, military disciplines, warres with the Indians, the commodities of their countries, a description of their townes, and havens, the increase of their trading with the names of their governours and magistrates. More especially an absolute narrative of the north parts of America, and of the discoveries and plantations of our English in New-England. Written by Sir Ferdinando Gorges .... Publisht ... by his grand-child Ferdinando Gorges Esquire, who hath much enlarged it and added severall accurate descriptions of his owne..

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:

south, north, west, sea, river, english, island, indians, england, east, spaniards, province, town, city, chap, new, nation, land, country, church, bay, tcp, seas, saint, ocean, lord, king, isle, god, court, america, world, virginia, temple, sun, sugar, spanish, spaine, port, pole, pil, people, nations, mountains, mexico, market, lake, iohn, inhabitants, great

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 great, and The discoueries of the world from their first originall vnto the yeere of our Lord 1555. Briefly written in the Portugall tongue by Antonie Galuano, gouernour of Ternate, the chiefe island of the Malucos: corrected, quoted, and now published in English by Richard Hakluyt, sometimes student of Christ church in Oxford 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?":

men, time, people, part, day, place, man, others, name, hee, parts, water, things, themselues, places, leagues, hath, miles, side, way, land, gold, foure, yeeres, certaine, times, world, women, death, kings, rest, fire, reason, dayes, life, hand, head, thence, ground, end, sea, manner, degrees, thing, earth, store, houses, house, night, children

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, are, was, were, be, had, called, being, have, made, did, make, haue, came, found, come, say, said, sent, see, set, hath, call, take, went, brought, bee, built, been, taken, put, having, let, vnto, do, according, done, hauing, described, vsed, tooke, left, written, carried, know, vse, cut, cast, bring, caused

Proper Nouns

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

king, god, sea, c., hath, haue, hee, 〉, ◊, 〈, south, north, east, de, christ, l., river, west, lord, indians, city, temple, ●, citie, lib, english, wee, england, whereof, countrey, spaniards, sunne, bee, world, land, kingdome, saint, iewes, island, new, indies, sonne, doe, chap, spaine, christians, beene, town, peru, province

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?"

they, their, it, his, them, he, him, i, our, her, we, you, my, themselves, me, she, your, thy, its, us, himself, vp, thee, ours, one, theirs, vnto, whereof, hee, u, mine, yeere, y, o, yours, l, ''s, yee, gods, f, elias, ſ, p, ian, h, iu, itself, ●, yanthey, there

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, many, such, first, same, good, little, much, more, most, long, small, new, high, full, whole, large, second, haue, old, best, last, rich, third, greatest, greater, former, common, like, next, ancient, famous, strange, white, dead, true, own, strong, chief, saith, better, few, twentie, pleasant, chiefe, able, present, excellent, least

not, so, then, also, very, there, now, more, as, most, yet, much, out, here, well, thereof, thus, therefore, first, together, onely, long, forth, sometimes, up, before, almost, only, off, away, rather, neere, in, about, especially, still, likewise, presently, therein, once, often, far, too, further, somewhat, never, all, commonly, vs, otherwise

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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