Distant Reader - subject-jamaica-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 9 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 126,229 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 14,025 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 88. 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:

shall, island, one, us, aforesaid, good, may, every, great, english, will, made, time, well, many, nature, act, much, also, enacted, men, several, make, within, authority, yet, two, without, like, person, law, st, first, now, england, court, though, thereof, persons, pounds, text, tcp, use, hereby, jamaica, man, part, things, whatsoever, land

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The laws of Jamaica passed by the assembly, and confirmed by His majesty in council, Feb. 23. 1683 : to which is added, A short account of the island and government thereof, with an exact map of the island., A Description of the island of Jamaica with the other isles and territories in America, to which the English are related ... : taken from the notes of Sr. Thomas Linch, Knight, governour of Jamaica, and other experienced persons in the said places : illustrated with maps / published by Richard Blome., and Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies In three parts. I. A brief treatise of the most principal fruits and herbs that grow in the East & West Indies; giving an account of their respective vertues both for food and physick, and what planet and sign they are under. Together with some directions for the preservation of health and life in those hot climates. II. The complaints of the negro-slaves against the hard usages and barbarous cruelties inflicted upon them. III. A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or negro-slave, and a Christian that was his master in America. By Philotheos Physiologus..

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

authority aforesaid, early english, english books, shall forfeit, hereby enacted, books online, forty shillings, contrary notwithstanding, pounds currant, contingent charges, twenty pounds, charges thereof, soveraign lord, record within, currant mony, text creation, ten pounds, creation partnership, page images, every year, five pounds, provided always, persons whatsoever, one another, great plenty, one half, whosoever shall, one third, majesties island, hundred pounds, de la, one thousand, image sets, hot climates, tcp schema, la vega, characters represented, represented either, jago de, currant money, hot countries, therefore enacted, law shall, one hundred, shall pay, person whatsoever, six months, several sorts, ten shillings, third part

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A trip to Jamaica with a true character of the people and island / by the author of Sot''s paradise. The earth-quake of Jamaica describ''d in a Pindarick poem / by Mr. Tutchin., and Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies In three parts. I. A brief treatise of the most principal fruits and herbs that grow in the East & West Indies; giving an account of their respective vertues both for food and physick, and what planet and sign they are under. Together with some directions for the preservation of health and life in those hot climates. II. The complaints of the negro-slaves against the hard usages and barbarous cruelties inflicted upon them. III. A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or negro-slave, and a Christian that was his master in America. By Philotheos Physiologus..

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:

tcp, island, sea, english, town, sun, law, isle, england, early, world, woods, trees, trade, text, tei, stomach, spirits, spanish, spaniards, spaniard, rivers, religion, record, person, people, penalty, peace, parish, nature, men, masters, man, majesties, justice, inhabitants, iamaica, heirs, health, governour, goods, god, general, fruit, fish, fate, death, creator, court, country

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 shall, and Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies In three parts. I. A brief treatise of the most principal fruits and herbs that grow in the East & West Indies; giving an account of their respective vertues both for food and physick, and what planet and sign they are under. Together with some directions for the preservation of health and life in those hot climates. II. The complaints of the negro-slaves against the hard usages and barbarous cruelties inflicted upon them. III. A discourse in way of dialogue, between an Ethiopean or negro-slave, and a Christian that was his master in America. By Philotheos Physiologus. 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, men, things, part, nature, person, text, sorts, thing, day, way, man, pounds, reason, place, contrary, others, people, use, money, parts, nothing, fruits, shillings, selves, t, works, texts, year, work, half, food, hath, charges, years, masters, country, months, plenty, number, manner, goods, description, characters, body, places, doth, times, side, end

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, is, are, have, said, being, do, made, was, were, enacted, aforesaid, make, been, had, take, found, provided, give, according, given, ordained, taken, does, called, recovered, pay, come, did, receive, having, known, eaten, has, live, built, say, forfeit, become, seated, hath, encoded, exceeding, call, ''s, put, know, keep, go, declared

Proper Nouns

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

island, english, authority, act, law, england, st., court, tcp, jamaica, persons, c., nature, isle, lord, governour, god, town, sea, majesties, land, justice, master, parish, peace, hath, penalty, king, council, new, majesty, spaniards, government, christians, port, world, royal, person, heirs, masters, sun, courts, trade, pounds, houses, assembly, bay, justices, christian, west

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, their, they, his, you, our, them, we, i, your, us, he, him, its, my, themselves, me, her, himself, she, thy, thee, yours, ours, ''em, theirs, ye, whereof, vvhat, one, mine, launch''d, hers

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, other, same, good, great, many, several, more, own, aforesaid, little, most, first, hot, much, better, whole, true, small, large, like, few, best, strong, full, english, greater, early, respective, general, next, natural, present, sufficient, excellent, poor, lawful, common, new, cold, proper, convenient, able, due, pleasant, long, last, considerable, third, old

not, so, then, very, as, well, more, here, also, now, thereof, most, only, up, further, much, out, therefore, whatsoever, there, never, about, too, hereby, thus, yet, especially, together, in, likewise, ever, far, rather, away, always, first, long, thereby, even, usually, off, no, sometimes, otherwise, indeed, therein, over, often, hereafter, already

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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