Distant Reader - subject-europe-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 70 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 4,453,412 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 63,620 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:

great, king, one, made, time, first, now, many, also, much, yet, may, duke, two, men, vpon, might, will, shall, french, france, make, without, good, part, called, place, church, city, day, emperour, haue, well, pope, people, prince, england, sent, religion, man, way, since, hee, three, god, princes, things, last, peace, lord

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The general history of the Reformation of the Church from the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome, begun in Germany by Martin Luther with the progress thereof in all parts of Christendom from the year 1517 to the year 1556 / written in Latin by John Sleidan ; and faithfully englished. To which is added A continuation to the Council of Trent in the year 1562 / by Edward Bohun., An itinerary vvritten by Fynes Moryson Gent. First in the Latine tongue, and then translated by him into English: containing his ten yeeres trauell through the tvvelue dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Jtaly, Turky, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Diuided into III parts. The I. part. Containeth a iournall through all the said twelue dominions: shewing particularly the number of miles, the soyle of the country, the situation of cities, the descriptions of them, with all monuments in each place worth the seeing, as also the rates of hiring coaches or horses from place to place, with each daies expences for diet, horse-meate, and the like. The II. part. Containeth the rebellion of Hugh, Earle of Tyrone, and the appeasing thereof: written also in forme of a iournall. The III. part. Containeth a discourse vpon seuerall heads, through all the said seuerall dominions., and An introduction to the history of the principal kingdoms and states of Europe by Samuel Puffendorf ... ; made English from the original..

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

french king, mean time, next day, great many, king ferdinand, greatest part, duke maurice, lord deputy, one hundred, every one, early english, one another, english books, two hundred, long time, books online, great number, great part, haue beene, make use, take care, ever since, must needs, many times, reformed religion, three hundred, vulgarly called, great deal, bishops sea, emperour charles, next morning, page images, christian religion, many things, christian majesty, one side, de la, might easily, christian king, chiefe towne, lord president, many years, thought fit, two miles, right hand, king henry, sir william, made use, short time, la venta

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Travels into divers parts of Europe and Asia, undertaken by the French King''s order to discover a new way by land into China containing many curious remarks in natural philosophy, geography, hydrology and history : together with a description of Great Tartary and of the different people who inhabit there / by Father Avril of the Order of the Jesuits ; done out of French ; to which is added, A supplement extracted from Hakluyt and Purchas giving an account of several journeys over land from Russia, Persia, and the Moguls country to China, together with the roads and distances of the places. A brief description of the future history of Europe, from Anno 1650 to An. 1710. Treating principally of those grand and famous mutations yet expected in the world, as, the ruine of the Popish hierarchy, the final annihilation of the Turkish Empire, the conversion of the eastern and western Jews, and their restauration to their ancient inheritance in the Holy Land, and the Fifth Monarchie of the universall reign of the Gospel of Christ upon Earth. With principal passages upon every of these, out of that famous manuscript of Paul Grebner, extant in Trinity-Colledge Library in Cambridge. Composed upon the occasion of the young Kings arrival into Scotland, to shew what will in probability be the event of the present affairs in England and Scotland., and The Continuation of our newes from the 4. to the 17. of this instant: Containing amongst other things, these particulars. A great ouerthrow giuen to the king of Persia by the Turkes. A letter written by the king ow Sweden, being a second manifestation of his proceeding, & the reasons thereof, with seuerall passages concerning Germany, and of the administrator of Hall, his preparation and successe in, and neere Magdenburg. The valour and courage of the Protestants in Bohemia, in resisting the tyranny of the imperialists ouer their conscience. Some late passages of the king of Denmarke, and those of Hamborough, and of his good successe against the Hamburgers, and others..

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:

king, majesty, church, majesties, french, lord, city, prince, duke, england, religion, france, empire, english, pope, court, tcp, house, army, sea, emperour, christian, world, country, castle, town, states, people, war, roman, kingdom, john, god, turks, nations, general, countrey, captain, state, spanish, river, queen, italy, iohn, highness, henry, government, father, elector, countries

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 Monsieur in a mouse-trap, or, The parable of the shark & herring-pond by the author of The magpies. 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, part, men, day, place, way, people, things, man, side, others, king, thing, name, rest, nothing, parts, places, religion, order, reason, death, end, kings, hee, country, manner, years, number, miles, peace, hath, yeare, times, hand, power, t, horse, forces, self, life, m., person, body, occasion, brother, house, son, hands, year

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, is, had, were, are, have, being, made, been, did, said, make, having, called, sent, do, came, taken, take, come, put, done, brought, say, see, set, found, give, thought, went, according, has, given, left, haue, know, took, hath, let, go, gave, began, vpon, kept, held, built, received, told, concerning

Proper Nouns

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

king, duke, france, emperour, pope, church, england, prince, god, city, lord, french, princes, c., army, sir, germany, rome, majesty, english, emperor, council, ●, de, henry, war, hath, b., sea, s., charles, bishop, italy, spain, haue, spaniards, peace, empire, men, town, court, states, 〉, house, kingdom, ◊, religion, state, j., elector

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, they, it, their, them, i, him, we, you, our, my, her, your, themselves, me, himself, us, she, its, ''em, thy, one, theirs, thee, vp, yours, ours, em, vnto, itself, mine, us''d, whereof, ye, hee, herself, hers, s, shou''d, myself, ●, yeere, severall, ourselves, march''d, whosoever, lye, l, hitherto

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, many, same, such, first, good, more, little, much, last, own, several, most, whole, new, old, french, present, second, next, true, common, long, greater, third, small, least, greatest, able, best, former, large, few, strong, full, high, late, free, better, ancient, certain, famous, particular, considerable, like, fourth, rich, very, necessary

not, so, then, now, also, very, more, most, as, well, there, much, only, up, out, therefore, here, yet, first, together, onely, never, thus, afterwards, before, long, thereof, in, again, rather, too, about, especially, away, ever, likewise, far, off, still, over, all, down, almost, no, soon, on, often, already, even, 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.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.