Distant Reader - subject-bristolEngland-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 13 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 153,239 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 11,787 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 89. 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:

city, castle, enemy, men, bristoll, one, might, governour, first, fiennes, surrender, yet, parliament, colonell, great, without, made, house, time, much, enemies, will, god, many, souldiers, mr, place, councell, two, sir, though, himselfe, hee, col, therefore, us, towne, bristol, text, good, may, now, shall, make, day, three, defendant, articles, william, town

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A true and full relation of the prosecution, arraignment, tryall, and condemnation of Nathaniel Fiennes, late colonell and governor of the city and castle of Bristoll, before a councell of war held at Saint Albans during nine dayes space, in December, 1643. Touching his cowardly and traytorly surrendering of this city and castle, with all the canon, ammunition, arms, magazines, prisoners and colours therein to the enemy, in lesse then three whole dayes siege, before any outwork taken, or the least battery or assault agains the city or castle walls; to the ineffable losse, danger and prejudice of the whole kingdom. Set forth at the earnest desire of many persons of quality, to vindicate the verity of this much disguised action, prosecution, tryall, sentence, and some subsequent proceedings; ... / By William Prynne and Clement Walker, Esqs;, A manifesto declaring what George Bishope hath been to the city of Bristoll and the particular persons now in authority therein and what hee hath received from them in recompence occasioned by the late sentence of banishment pronounced upon him by them, 16th, 7th Mon., 1665, and other useages for his conscience to God / by George Bishope., and A true relation of the storming Bristoll, and the taking the town, castle, forts, ordnance, ammunition and arms, by Sir Thomas Fairfax''s army, on Thursday the 11. of this instant Septemb. 1645. Together with severall articles between Prince Rupert, and Generall Fairfax, before the delivering up of the castle. Sent in severall letters to the Honorable William Lenthall Esq; Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons, and read in the said House. Ordered by the Commons assembled in Parliament, that this relation with the articles, beforthwith printed and published: H: Elsynge, Cler. Parl. D. Com..

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

colonell fiennes, sir william, mr prynne, english books, early english, william waller, books online, prince rupert, nathaniel fiennes, make good, utmost extremity, nathaniell fiennes, page images, colonell nathaniel, three dayes, text creation, creation partnership, sir thomas, angel gabriel, let us, one hundred, early works, honourable councell, major wood, whole kingdome, prynne answered, three moneths, clement walker, next morning, colonell nathaniell, enemy entred, great losse, late governour, two hundred, lord say, william prynne, mr hassard, william wallers, thomas fairfax, surrender thereof, printed relation, must needs, mona logarbo, textual changes, godly persons, hill fort, encoded text, colonell essex, encoded edition, asking permission

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Colonell Fiennes letter to my lord general concerning Bristol The honour of Bristol. Shewing how the angel Gabriel of Bristol, fought with three ships, who boarded us many times, wherein we cleared our decks, and killed five hundred of their men, and wounded many more, and made them flye into Cales, where we lost but three men, to the honour of the angel Gabriel of Bristol. To the tune of, Our noble King in his progress., and Iehovah iireh: or, Gods providence in delivering the godly. Opened in two sermons in the citie of Bristoll, on the day of publike thanksgiving in that citie, March 14. 1642. For the deliverance of that citie from the invasion without, and the plot of malignants within the city, intended to have been acted the Tuesday night before. With a short narration of that bloody and abominable plot. Preached by Iohn Tombes, B.D. It is this two and twentieth day of Aprill, Anno Dom. 1643. ordered by the Committee of the House of Commons in Parliament concerning printing, that this booke intituled, Johovah Jireh, or Gods providence in delivering the godly, be printed. John White..

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:

city, parliament, tcp, house, castle, fiennes, committee, bristoll, army, work, william, town, thomason, souldiers, roman, psal, prynne, prince, poor, peters, nathaniel, majesties, lord, line, king, hall, governour, gods, godly, god, general, garrison, excellency, enemy, enemies, deponent, defendant, court, councell, commons, commission, colonell, col, articles, armes, angel

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 city, and A copie of the articles agreed upon at the surrender of the city of Bristol betweene Colonell Nathaniel Fiennes governour of the said city, on the one party, and Colonell Charles Gerrard and Captain William Teringham for and on the behalfe of Prince Rupert, on 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, enemy, time, surrender, place, enemies, day, others, man, text, part, reason, things, persons, souldiers, siege, hee, losse, himselfe, divers, case, city, horse, dayes, way, service, thing, foot, cause, works, truth, order, witnesses, places, extremity, owne, honour, deliverance, power, morning, people, defence, castle, space, p., command, answer, work, want, times

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, be, had, were, have, is, said, being, are, been, did, made, make, done, taken, sent, entred, came, having, surrendred, put, lost, held, come, see, answered, gave, defend, according, give, left, keep, delivered, let, given, deliver, take, do, say, received, set, printed, called, hold, told, surrender, brought, saw, concerning, lay

Proper Nouns

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

city, castle, bristoll, governour, parliament, colonell, fiennes, god, councell, sir, col, enemy, house, ., bristol, william, mr, defendant, lord, towne, town, souldiers, prynne, armes, line, london, articles, commons, garrison, tcp, army, king, hath, excellency, prince, fort, doe, major, warre, captaine, commission, citizens, relation, law, england, hee, forts, committee, kingdome, oath

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, they, them, their, i, him, we, our, my, you, your, me, us, themselves, its, himself, her, thy, she, ours, thee, theirs, one, yours, mine, ia, hee, †, yee, whosoever, whereof, u, severall, ourselves, nitens, gods, e

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, same, more, good, own, first, whole, much, most, least, last, present, late, true, very, particular, publike, utmost, strong, godly, sufficient, full, early, better, ready, next, little, former, greater, able, common, best, private, contrary, honourable, himselfe, english, tenable, second, few, right, like, new, open, extraordinary, due, greatest

not, then, so, up, out, very, therefore, now, as, there, first, never, more, only, thereof, most, onely, much, thus, off, yet, well, secondly, also, in, cowardly, here, together, ever, thirdly, therein, rather, even, all, likewise, else, long, at, away, over, further, too, presently, before, fourthly, far, on, forth, about, 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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