Distant Reader - subject-massachusetts-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 23 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 548,497 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 23,847 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 90. 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:

god, us, will, one, hee, may, christ, men, man, yet, good, many, now, shall, time, much, great, england, also, wee, made, new, lord, make, bee, english, first, things, therefore, well, come, people, word, might, church, two, like, doe, take, day, know, way, came, see, heart, place, without, vs, world, must

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Simplicities defence against seven-headed policy. Or, innocency vindicated, being unjustly accused, and sorely censured by that seven-headed church-government united in New-England: or, that servant so imperious in his masters absence revived, and now thus re-acting in Nevv-England. Or, the combate of the united colonies, not onely against some of the natives and subjects but against the authority also of the kingdom of England, ... Wherein is declared an act of a great people and country of the Indians in those parts, ... in their voluntary submission and subjection unto the protection and government of Old England ... Imprimatur, Aug. 3d. 1646. Diligently perused, approved, and licensed to the presse, according to order by publike authority., Hypocrisie unmasked: by a true relation of the proceedings of the Governour and company of the Massachusets against Samuel Gorton (and his accomplices) a notorious disturber of the peace and quiet of the severall governments wherein he lived : with the grounds and reasons thereof, examined and allowed by their Generall Court holden at Boston in New-England in November last, 1646. Together with a particular answer to the manifold slanders, and abominable falshoods which are contained in a book written by the said Gorton, and entituled, Simplicities defence against seven-headed policy, &c. Discovering to the view of all whose eyes are open, his manifold blasphemies; as also the dangerous agreement which he and his accomplices made with ambitious and treacherous Indians, who at the same time were deeply engaged in a desperate conspiracy to cut off all the rest of the English in the other plantations. VVhereunto is added a briefe narration (occasioned by certain aspersions) of the true grounds or cause of the first planting of New-England; the president of their churches in the way and worship of God; their communion with the Reformed Churches; and their practise towards those that dissent from them in matters of religion and Church-government. / By Edw. Winslow. Published by authority., and The danger of tolerating levellers in a civil state, or, An historicall narration of the dangerous pernicious practices and opinions wherewith Samuel Gorton and his levelling accomplices so much disturbed and molested the severall plantations in New-England parallel to the positions and proceedings of the present levellers in Old-England : wherein their severall errors dangerous and very destructive to the peace both of church and state ... together with the course that was there taken for suppressing them are fully set forth, with a satisfactory answer to their complaints made to the Parliament / by Edw. Winslow of Plymouth in New-England..

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

new england, jesus christ, early english, english books, books online, amongst us, mine host, samuel gorton, lord jesus, take notice, christ jesus, page images, text creation, among us, creation partnership, god made, generall court, one another, god will, every man, meane time, wee know, may bee, nothing else, every one, new canaan, let us, must needs, take away, bring forth, will pray, short time, captaine standish, united colonies, image sets, characters represented, tcp schema, represented either, old england, early works, may see, iesus christ, every day, set forth, open court, right hand, many things, shall bee, well knowne, holy spirit

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are An historicall discoverie and relation of the English plantations, in Nevv England Containing their aventurous passages, their happie arivall and comfortable planting, manifesting the goodnesse of God in their preservations from many apparent dangers. With a relation of such religious and ciuill lawes, and customs as are in practise amongst the indians, with their natures and habits. As also a naration of the ayre, earth, water, fish, and fowles of that countrie. continued from the first beginning, in the yeare of our Lord 1607. and so handling all passages of moment successiuely from time to time. The wonders of the invisible world observations as well historical as theological upon the nature, the number and the operations of the devils : accompany''d with I. Some accounts of the greievous [sic] molestations by daemons and witchcrafts ... and the trials of some eminent malefactors ... II. Some councils directing a due improvement of the terrible things lately done by the unusual and amazing range of evil spirits ... III. Some conjectures upon the great events likely to befall the world in general and New England in particular ... IV. A short narrative of a late outrage committed by a knot of witches in Swedeland ... V. The devil discovered, in a brief discourse upon those temptations which are the more ordinary devices of the wicked one / by Cotton Mather., and Plain dealing, or, Nevves from New-England a short view of New-Englands present government, both ecclesiasticall and civil, compared with the anciently-received and established government of England in some materiall points : fit for the gravest consideratin in these times / by Thomas Lechford ....

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:

england, god, english, tcp, new, lord, indians, court, church, christ, country, sea, land, governour, government, churches, bay, spirit, massachusets, man, magistrates, king, good, commissioners, chap, word, towne, state, salvages, river, law, great, gorton, deare, corne, cor, captaine, wrath, world, witches, witch, winter, wilderness, virginia, time, thing, text, summer, son, ship

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 god, and An address presented to the King, August 7th, 1689 when those from the Massachuset''s colony were, by that worthy citizen, Sir Henry Ashurst, Baronet : to Their Most Excellent Majesties, King William and Queen Mary of England, &c., the humble address and petition of the General Court of Your Majesties most ancient colony of New-Plymouth in New-England. 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, man, time, things, hee, people, day, way, heart, place, word, thing, others, power, world, part, death, life, sins, nothing, hand, persons, parts, name, manner, selves, rest, end, none, sin, words, land, text, ground, peace, spirit, hands, water, ▪, places, hath, children, house, reason, work, truth, cause, answer, country, t

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:

is, be, was, have, are, were, had, being, made, did, make, said, come, do, take, know, been, came, see, heard, say, bee, thought, found, done, called, having, give, pray, sent, set, put, according, let, am, went, brought, taken, live, doe, desire, desired, saw, given, bring, hath, told, cast, call, left

Proper Nouns

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

god, christ, england, lord, wee, new, english, church, hee, indians, hath, court, c., doe, mr., ●, yea, jesus, devil, bee, gorton, tcp, king, governour, word, chap, owne, massachusets, government, thou, 〉, gods, master, spirit, sea, heaven, countrey, law, churches, ◊, pag, magistrates, iohn, captaine, country, vs, beene, 〈, boston, bay

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?"

i, they, it, their, his, them, our, we, he, him, you, us, my, your, me, themselves, her, himself, she, thy, its, thee, one, mine, ours, theirs, vp, ye, ourselves, yours, ''s, hee, vnto, ●, myself, em, ''em, whereof, touchey, thou, l, ha, yourselves, wh, u, ti, th, severall, s, non

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, many, good, great, more, same, much, first, true, little, own, present, english, full, best, most, better, new, next, common, last, whole, small, long, least, old, able, former, few, second, particular, like, wise, short, open, fit, large, right, greater, early, ready, high, strong, free, private, holy, dead, worthy, sufficient

not, so, then, now, also, therefore, as, there, very, well, up, more, yet, out, much, onely, here, ever, never, only, most, forth, first, together, away, thus, again, in, long, thereof, even, off, all, too, else, still, rather, before, sometimes, over, indeed, especially, further, far, likewise, no, down, vs, about, 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.

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