Distant Reader - subject-politicalScience-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 52 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 4,362,096 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 83,886 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:

may, king, one, will, men, great, people, power, man, yet, much, made, good, god, many, first, make, without, time, shall, must, prince, law, well, therefore, government, things, right, might, also, reason, princes, every, kings, now, common, though, state, nature, thing, either, laws, part, two, say, never, like, another, us, take

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Bibliotheca politica: or An enquiry into the ancient constitution of the English government both in respect to the just extent of regal power, and the rights and liberties of the subject. Wherein all the chief arguments, as well against, as for the late revolution, are impartially represented, and considered, in thirteen dialogues. Collected out of the best authors, as well antient as modern. To which is added an alphabetical index to the whole work., Policie vnveiled vvherein may be learned, the order of true policie in kingdomes, and common-wealths: the matters of justice, and government; the addresses, maxims, and reasons of state: the science of governing well a people: and where the subject may learne true obedience unto their kings, princes, and soveraignes. Written in Spanish, and translated into English by I.M. of Magdalen Hall in Oxford., and The works of the famous Nicholas Machiavel, citizen and secretary of Florence written originally in Italian, and from thence newly and faithfully translated into English..

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

every man, every one, roman non, many times, one man, must needs, tells us, let us, one another, man may, make use, great council, soveraign power, take away, much less, made use, great men, nothing else, supreme power, first place, greatest part, every thing, many things, will find, english books, early english, long time, common people, common good, whole world, taken away, shall find, major part, whole kingdom, king henry, absolute power, mean time, wise men, books online, short time, may make, may see, many years, whole people, publick good, will make, great deal, civil government, will never, like manner

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The prerogative of popular government. A politicall discourse in two books. The former containing the first præliminary of Oceana, inlarged, interpreted, and vindicated from all such mistakes or slanders as have been alledged against it under the notion of objections. The second concerning ordination, against Dr. H. Hamond, Dr. L. Seaman, and the authors they follow. In which two books is contained the whole commonwealth of the Hebrews, or of Israel, senate, people, and magistracy, both as it stood in the institution by Moses, and as it came to be formed after the captivity. As also the different policies introduced into the Church of Christ, during the time of the Apostles. By James Harrington. Philosophicall rudiments concerning government and society. Or, A dissertation concerning man in his severall habitudes and respects, as the member of a society, first secular, and then sacred. Containing the elements of civill politie in the agreement which it hath both with naturall and divine lawes. In which is demonstrated, both what the origine of justice is, and wherein the essence of Christian religion doth consist. Together with the nature, limits, and qualifications both of regiment and subjection. / By Tho: Hobbes., and Politick maxims and observations written by the most learned Hugo Grotius translated for the ease and benefit of the English states-men. By H.C. S.T.B..

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, government, people, state, god, prince, laws, law, authority, subjects, kingdom, power, war, religion, parliament, empire, city, man, church, nature, father, court, country, common, romans, men, chap, world, lord, council, senate, princes, nobility, monarchy, great, duke, tcp, reason, majesty, liberty, justice, french, english, enemy, covenant, soldiers, pope, person, lawes, kingdome

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 The tenure of kings and magistrates proving that it is lawfull, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant, or wicked king, and after due conviction, to depose and put the author, J.M. 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, people, man, time, power, things, reason, thing, kings, part, others, way, nothing, place, subjects, words, self, times, end, person, nature, hath, right, one, life, king, body, state, manner, p., t, wealth, world, death, word, force, opinion, use, rest, persons, cause, occasion, case, arms, day, order, war, peace, hands, government

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, are, have, were, had, being, made, make, do, been, did, said, say, having, take, done, give, see, put, come, let, know, has, taken, think, according, find, given, called, hath, found, thought, came, brought, set, sent, makes, keep, gave, used, prove, left, consider, am, making, held, concerning, took

Proper Nouns

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

king, god, prince, law, princes, government, 〉, ◊, 〈, power, parliament, hath, ●, laws, kingdom, state, authority, city, rome, war, chap, army, nature, lord, men, romans, c., father, church, england, duke, people, monarchy, france, italy, commons, council, commonwealth, soveraign, majesty, world, nobility, pope, de, senate, lords, mr., man, court, liberty

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, his, he, they, their, them, i, him, you, we, our, your, himself, themselves, her, my, us, me, its, she, thy, thee, one, theirs, ''em, ours, yours, ''s, herself, mine, vp, vnto, us''d, whereof, em, ib, ye, hers, itself, hee, ●, s, tollit, ourselves, l, †, whosoever, myself, non, guelf

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?"

other, great, such, many, own, same, good, more, first, much, common, whole, true, new, necessary, little, greater, able, most, particular, better, certain, present, last, least, several, private, free, greatest, best, few, former, second, old, like, wise, roman, sufficient, contrary, long, ancient, publick, absolute, general, very, natural, right, full, dangerous, non

not, so, then, more, only, as, therefore, well, very, also, now, much, most, never, up, yet, out, first, ever, thus, onely, too, rather, there, here, even, together, likewise, away, else, far, before, sometimes, long, all, afterwards, again, always, still, no, often, otherwise, in, thereof, easily, thereby, already, once, indeed, down

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.