Distant Reader - subject-chesterEngland-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 4 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 22,127 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 5,531 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 85. 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:

chester, city, shall, sir, william, castle, horse, us, lord, sent, great, enemy, text, time, many, brereton, will, worke, byron, may, march, souldiers, made, men, commissioners, two, answer, might, day, col, god, parliament, officers, part, collonel, without, major, hundred, night, wee, letter, horses, fort, yet, ian, now, county, propositions, gentlemen, much

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Sir William Breretons letter sent to the Honoble William Lenthal Esq; Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons. Concerning all the passages and treaties of the siege and taking of the city of Chester· And by Mr. Speaker appointed to be printed and published. With a most exact declaration of Chesters enlargement after three yeers bondage, set forth by Nathanael Lancaster, chaplein to the Cheshire forces., Sir William Breretons letter concerning the surrender of the city of Chester for the Parliament: together with the articles agreed on betwixt both parties, and the commissioners names. Sent in a letter to the Honorable William Lenthal Esq; Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons, and appointed to be forthwith printed and published, and A petition delivered in to the lords sprituall and temporall, by Sir Thomas Aston, Baronet, from the County Palatine of Chester concerning Episcopacy To the high and honourable court of Parliament. / The nobilitie, knights, gentry, ministers, freeholders, and inhabitants of the County Palatine of Chester, whose names are subscribed in the severall schedules hereunto annexed..

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

sir william, william brereton, lord byron, english books, honorable house, books online, early english, early works, hundred horse, william breretons, william lenthal, next day, chester suburbs, textual changes, lenthal esq, collonel iones, breretons letter, mean time, collonel jones, county palatine, whose names, welch side, iohn byron, great britain, three hundred, fort thereof, page images, john byron, letter sent, lieutenant colonel, two hundred, chidley coot, william ince, cheshire forces, adjutant louthiane, shall appoint, beston castle, financial support, preserves archaic, digital transcription, commercial purposes, xml conversion, letter concerning, notre dame, forlorne hope, online text, sir thomas, asking permission, articles agreed, musket shot

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Sir William Breretons letter sent to the Honoble William Lenthal Esq; Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons. Concerning all the passages and treaties of the siege and taking of the city of Chester· And by Mr. Speaker appointed to be printed and published. With a most exact declaration of Chesters enlargement after three yeers bondage, set forth by Nathanael Lancaster, chaplein to the Cheshire forces. Sir William Breretons letter concerning the surrender of the city of Chester for the Parliament: together with the articles agreed on betwixt both parties, and the commissioners names. Sent in a letter to the Honorable William Lenthal Esq; Speaker of the Honorable House of Commons, and appointed to be forthwith printed and published, and His majesties ansvver to the humble petition of the gentlemen, free-holders, and ministers of the countie palatine of Chester delivered to His Maiestie at York the seventh of May, 1642. At the court and York 9 May 1642. His Maiestie hath given me expresse command to give you this His answer to your petition..

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:

william, city, chester, petition, lord, leaguer, horse, county, commissioners, castle, byron

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 chester, and A petition delivered in to the lords sprituall and temporall, by Sir Thomas Aston, Baronet, from the County Palatine of Chester concerning Episcopacy To the high and honourable court of Parliament. / The nobilitie, knights, gentry, ministers, freeholders, and inhabitants of the County Palatine of Chester, whose names are subscribed in the severall schedules hereunto annexed. 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, text, enemy, men, day, worke, part, night, answer, horse, servant, others, letter, man, ground, way, propositions, articles, horses, gentlemen, side, conditions, arms, ▪, service, rest, petition, none, commissioners, body, works, relief, quarters, dayes, city, servants, releife, prisoners, party, money, march, liberty, hath, walls, treaty, losse, hopes, work, self, river

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, have, were, are, is, sent, had, been, being, made, said, concerning, come, came, tooke, make, appointed, taken, send, march, lost, fell, drew, do, wounded, given, give, delivered, am, allowed, remain, received, meet, set, returned, put, brought, receive, having, has, caused, agreed, whiles, treat, take, slew, return, inclosed, desire

Proper Nouns

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

chester, city, sir, william, castle, lord, brereton, byron, horse, col, god, parliament, collonel, major, fort, souldiers, ., officers, john, leaguer, county, cheshire, wee, commissioners, citizens, wales, foote, commons, beston, thomason, commanders, king, ian, house, foot, thomas, suburbs, owne, ireland, forces, colonel, bridge, north, march, lieut, iones, iohn, army, welch, tcp

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?"

their, they, them, his, we, i, your, our, you, it, us, my, he, him, themselves, ian, me, ours, yours, mine, its, her, theirs, she, one, cha

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?"

such, many, great, other, more, good, honorable, own, next, same, further, small, much, first, early, honourable, high, few, strong, free, english, considerable, common, whole, textual, sufficient, new, last, full, former, fit, several, present, mean, humble, safe, like, adjacent, true, possible, pleased, open, faithful, desperate, content, better, best, worke, tractable, suitable

not, so, then, up, now, very, out, about, off, more, thereof, most, yet, well, much, in, there, neere, also, early, away, formerly, as, whatsoever, therein, therefore, first, together, online, thereby, long, fully, hereby, ever, utterly, seasonably, quietly, over, onely, on, no, never, humbly, even, before, already, too, sooner, rather, often

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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