Distant Reader - subject-italy-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 15 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,315,660 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 87,710 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 92. 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, one, many, much, made, duke, might, men, king, yet, city, time, church, two, italy, may, also, will, first, little, good, well, state, rome, french, prince, make, without, place, things, france, now, princes, way, called, come, forces, though, part, long, foot, people, sent, see, therefore, army, war, side, town, spain

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The history of the wars of Italy from the year MDCXIII to MDCXLIV in XVIII books / written originally in Italian, by Pietro Giovanni Capriata ... ; and rendred in English by Henry Earl of Monmouth., Politick discourses written in Italian by Paolo Paruta ... ; whereunto is added a short soliloquy in which the author briefly examines the whole course of his life ; rendred into English by the Right Honorable Henry, Earl of Monmouth., and The voyage of Italy, or, A compleat journey through Italy in two parts : with the characters of the people, and the description of the chief towns, churches, monasteries, tombs, libraries, pallaces, villas, gardens, pictures, statues, and antiquities : as also of the interest, government, riches, force, &c. of all the princes : with instructions concerning travel / by Richard Lassels, Gent. who travelled through Italy five times as tutor to several of the English nobility and gentry ; never before extant..

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

right hand, left hand, every one, make use, great duke, one side, santa maria, great altar, great many, prince thomaso, one another, next day, white marble, let us, may see, high altar, many years, long time, will find, spanish agents, italian princes, two hundred, many things, one may, many men, hundred thousand, might easily, paulo veronese, strong holds, must needs, early english, english books, made use, spanish army, greatest part, roman empire, one hundred, two miles, might make, spanish forces, marquess villa, three miles, great part, miles distant, books online, without much, french forces, many others, french army, hundred years

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are An itinerary contayning a voyage, made through Italy, in the yeare 1646, and 1647. Illustrated with divers figures of antiquities. Never before published. / By Jo: Raymond, Gent. An account of His Excellence, Roger Earl of Castlemaine''s embassy from His Sacred Majesty James IId, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, &c. to His Holiness Innocent XI published formerly in the Italian tongue by Mr. Michael Wright ... and now made English ; with several amendments and additions., and Italy in its original glory, ruine, and revival being an exact survey of the whole geography and history of that famous country, with the adjacent islands of Sicily, Malta, &c. : and whatever is remarkable in Rome (the mistress of the world) and all those towns and territories mentioned in antient and modern authors / translated out of the originals for general satisfaction, by Edmund Warcupp, Esquire..

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:

church, italy, state, city, prince, pope, duke, court, town, king, french, sea, river, government, emperour, country, venetians, temple, marble, lake, cities, castle, world, villa, tcp, rome, roman, republick, pillars, people, palace, nobility, france, family, empire, council, churches, bridge, army, altar, water, war, venetian, st., spanish, souldiers, senate, saint, romans, rock

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 Some letters, containing an account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, some parts of Germany, &c. in the years 1685 and 1686 written by G. Burnet, D.D. to the Hoble. R.B. ; to which is added, An appendix, containing some remarks on Switzerland and Italy, writ by a person of quality, and communicated to the author ; together with a table of the contents of each letter. 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, things, way, place, part, side, hand, people, others, reason, thing, end, man, day, t, places, affairs, self, miles, occasion, peace, times, parts, kings, towns, forces, power, order, name, war, nothing, one, business, work, condition, rest, danger, arms, years, foot, country, state, number, thence, hath, picture, hands, use, horse

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, is, be, were, had, being, are, have, made, did, been, having, make, do, called, come, sent, see, said, went, came, taken, thought, saw, done, keep, take, go, brought, found, put, built, say, given, stands, give, seen, kept, began, set, pass, hath, took, let, held, gave, find, received, has, left

Proper Nouns

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

duke, king, italy, church, city, rome, prince, s., france, princes, french, state, ●, spain, army, governour, pope, town, commonwealth, sea, court, millain, cardinal, forces, foot, horse, piedmont, romans, spaniards, river, war, emperour, 〉, savoy, hath, dukes, ◊, castle, st., naples, venice, enemy, government, venetians, crown, san, saint, republick, 〈, popes

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?"

it, they, he, his, their, them, him, i, you, her, we, himself, themselves, she, its, our, my, your, me, us, one, herself, vp, theirs, thy, thee, whereof, ours, mine, hers, l, itself, yours, ●, us''d, s, ye, stirr''d, severall, march''d, iu, ''s, †, yow, yourself, whosevalour, wh, ve, u, ts

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, little, much, good, such, same, more, first, own, new, greater, whole, able, several, old, last, common, famous, most, best, long, certain, present, high, true, noble, small, better, strong, few, french, former, full, particular, second, excellent, greatest, necessary, least, large, ancient, rich, very, publick, chief, vast, next, ready

not, so, then, very, more, also, much, well, here, now, as, there, most, only, out, therefore, up, yet, together, afterwards, too, long, first, thereof, over, almost, rather, in, far, thus, likewise, down, never, still, onely, easily, even, on, formerly, off, about, hence, already, ever, away, less, all, therein, often, before

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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