Distant Reader - subject-preaching-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 17 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 388,140 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 22,831 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, may, will, one, men, man, must, yet, shall, church, word, preaching, things, much, good, christ, many, therefore, say, people, great, now, make, scripture, us, well, first, lord, preach, haue, also, though, non, without, made, work, text, thing, way, words, vnto, every, see, gods, true, time, might, place, office, like

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The preachers plea: or, A treatise in forme of a plain dialogue making known the worth and necessary vse of preaching: shewing also how a man may profit by it, both for the informing of his iudgement, and the reforming of his life. By Samuel Hieron minister of the gospell at Modbury in the countie of Deuon., Quo warranto, or, A moderate enquiry into the warrantablenesse of the preaching of gifted and unordained persons where also some other questions are discussed : viz. concerning [brace] ministerial relation, election, ordination : being a vindication of the late Jus divinum ministerii evangeliei ... from the exceptions of Mr. John Martin, Mr. Sam. Pette, Mr. Frederick Woodal ... in their late book, intituled The preacher sent / by Matthew Poole ..., and A discourse of the pastoral care written by Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum..

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

roman non, humane learning, english books, early english, every one, new testament, books online, holy ghost, must needs, every man, man may, let us, page images, gods word, one thing, text creation, creation partnership, two things, many things, may preach, gifted men, set forth, many times, whole church, take notice, iesus christ, god will, learned men, men may, one another, shall find, common places, old testament, among us, mr webster, must preach, represented either, may see, will make, image sets, will say, tcp schema, characters represented, take away, particular church, gods people, vnto god, wee must, jesus christ, extraordinary officers

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Vindiciæ literarum, the schools guarded, or, The excellency and vsefulnesse of humane learning in subordination to divinity, and preparation to the ministry as also, rules for the expounding of the Holy Scriptures : with a synopsis of the most materiall tropes and figures contained in the sacred scriptures : whereunto is added, an examination of John Websters delusive Examen of academies / by Thomas Hall ... ; in the end is annexed an elaborate defence of logick by a learned pen. Die Sabbathi 26. April. 1645 It is this day ordained and declared by the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, that no person be permitted to preach who is not ordained a minister ..., and The humble petition or remonstrance of Rich: Day of Eton neer Windsor, to the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England. I. For the repairing of the decay of wood and timber. II. For the planting of an able preaching ministry throughout the land. III. For the working of the works of mercy and charitie: and for an act against the pride of apparell..

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:

god, church, tcp, lord, christ, scripture, law, word, prophets, gospell, bishop, psal, paul, office, minister, man, world, thing, sam, roman, rom, religion, priests, preaching, people, ministry, men, king, john, iesus, gospel, divinity, cor, webster, truth, treatise, tim, text, spirit, sermons, sermon, sense, scriptures, schools, rule, pulpit, prov, prince, prelates, preachers

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 A Letter from a gentleman in Grayes-Inn, to a justice of the peace in the countrey explaining the Act of Uniformity in that part which doth concern unlicensed preachers. 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?":

man, men, things, people, word, scripture, thing, way, words, work, others, time, place, preaching, reason, nothing, part, truth, p., i, matter, text, world, times, heart, case, knowledge, life, power, sense, day, one, faith, learning, gifts, places, hath, name, religion, t, end, doth, argument, doctrine, ordination, persons, office, nature, none, officers

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, are, have, was, were, do, had, say, make, being, did, been, made, said, see, preach, let, take, know, called, put, set, give, preaching, come, according, has, done, read, haue, am, find, given, sent, taken, go, teach, learned, concerning, hath, think, prove, speak, bee, bring, vnto, answer, call, brought

Proper Nouns

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

〉, ◊, 〈, god, church, christ, c., lord, ●, hath, gods, cor, minister, word, thou, paul, king, brethren, office, law, de, text, preaching, ministers, haue, tcp, holy, gospel, est, apostles, ye, doe, mat, m., gospell, tim, rom, bishop, mr, preachers, iohn, spirit, clergy, owne, preacher, wee, ministry, mans, sam, sermon

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, i, their, them, we, our, you, him, us, my, your, me, himself, themselves, thy, its, her, thee, one, she, vp, ye, theirs, ''s, ours, yours, mine, vnto, ''em, yee, vvhat, myself, hee, yow, wil, whosoever, whereof, vbi, thēselues, tendo, tamen, susceptione, sho, religiō, non, imself, 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?"

such, other, many, good, great, much, true, more, own, same, first, non, common, whole, necessary, roman, -, particular, able, ordinary, better, second, new, little, greater, best, holy, extraordinary, last, most, sufficient, least, old, right, full, private, false, very, humane, wise, general, due, fit, few, like, saith, proper, early, present, haue

not, so, then, therefore, more, now, also, thus, very, well, yet, as, only, most, here, much, up, out, too, onely, never, indeed, first, even, rather, together, ever, that, sometimes, forth, away, is, in, there, all, still, often, far, down, especially, long, fully, no, on, over, again, before, otherwise, else, easily

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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