subject-columbusChristopher-gutenberg
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 2021-06-03 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader gutenberg process, and the input was the result of a query applied to a local mirror of Project Gutenberg -- facet_subject:"Columbus, Christopher". Then, for future reference, the results were saved to a Zip file complete with rudimentary bibliographics. The name of the file is input-file.zip. The Zip file was then unpacked and the contents saved to a cache as well as a directory 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 18 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,144,563 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 63,586 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 72. 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:
columbus, one, great, admiral, made, time, de, now, will, first, may, new, spain, island, sidenote, men, two, little, man, much, world, voyage, day, found, sea, don, land, diego, king, might, well, many, long, even, must, coast, like, people, queen, years, gold, ships, still, see, way, sent, every, far, came, good
Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Volume II), and Mercedes of Castile; Or, The Voyage to Cathay.
The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:
new world, las casas, don felipe, san domingo, christopher columbus, santa maria, don diego, de la, don luis, first voyage, santo domingo, luis de, martin alonzo, marco polo, queen isabella, juan de, diego mendez, united states, prince juan, peter martyr, tells us, san salvador, de bobadilla, juan perez, new york, young man, next day, king ferdinand, don christopher, prince henry, second voyage, la cosa, alonzo de, la rabida, one hundred, diego de, del almirante, son diego, first time, old world, don bartholomew, fifteenth century, took place, de quintanilla, great khan, la navidad, two years, bartholomew columbus, hundred years, let us
And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Volume II) Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery, and Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia being a concordance of choice tributes to the great Genoese, his grand discovery, and his greatness of mind and purpose.
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:
columbus, spain, admiral, isabella, king, st., spanish, spaniards, indies, diego, juan, god, christopher, bartholomew, world, santa, roldan, queen, portugal, palos, ovando, new, martin, highness, genoa, ferdinand, domingo, america, san, ojeda, mendez, maria, man, indians, europe, espanola, don, cape, bobadilla, adelantado, west, washington, seville, santo, prince, portuguese, pinzon, pinta, nina, mr.
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 columbus, and Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia being a concordance of choice tributes to the great Genoese, his grand discovery, and his greatness of mind and purpose 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:
- columbus - Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery
- columbus - The Son of Columbus
- columbus - The Columbiad: A Poem
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:
- columbus, sidenote, admiral - Christopher Columbus and How He Received and Imparted the Spirit of Discovery
- columbus, admiral, great - Christopher Columbus
- thou, don, admiral - Mercedes of Castile; Or, The Voyage to Cathay
- thy, er, thro - The Columbiad: A Poem
- domenico, shop, shops - Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery — Volume 1
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, men, man, island, day, voyage, sidenote, land, world, sea, people, years, coast, admiral, ships, gold, way, name, life, part, letter, discovery, natives, days, place, king, others, islands, course, ship, nothing, country, mind, one, earth, night, shore, son, hand, vessels, map, water, order, things, father, eyes, work, expedition, sovereigns, queen
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, had, is, be, were, have, been, are, made, has, found, did, said, being, do, sent, came, see, make, come, having, seen, know, called, find, known, brought, given, discovered, go, saw, left, took, gave, thought, say, take, went, taken, give, set, received, sailed, done, put, returned, says, think, heard, passed
Proper Nouns
An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.
columbus, _, spain, admiral, diego, de, don, isabella, thou, luis, god, queen, spaniards, indians, ferdinand, america, christopher, king, new, st., juan, las, la, indies, san, bobadilla, roldan, domingo, casas, world, portugal, señor, bartholomew, genoa, martin, doña, ovando, pinzon, adelantado, palos, santa, europe, o''er, felipe, hath, west, cuba, john, maria, ojeda
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, their, him, i, them, her, we, its, my, you, our, himself, she, me, us, your, thy, themselves, thee, itself, one, myself, herself, ourselves, thyself, yourself, ours, mine, theirs, yours, ye, hers, thou, oneself, d''eau, yourselves, viz.--they, valverde"--, o''er, o, note.--we, interrupted,--the, hordes,--the, himself,--for, him--"is, hic, heavy-
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?"
great, other, little, own, such, first, new, many, more, same, much, good, last, spanish, long, old, few, young, royal, high, certain, large, small, true, whole, full, present, several, western, second, necessary, most, poor, noble, different, unknown, early, various, possible, least, human, ready, american, portuguese, next, native, beautiful, able, better, very
not, so, now, then, more, as, out, even, very, only, here, up, well, still, most, also, far, however, again, never, there, back, too, much, soon, ever, thus, first, once, down, yet, off, away, just, already, long, on, indeed, all, always, perhaps, no, about, therefore, almost, probably, forth, in, often, later
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.
Thank you for using the Distant Reader.