Distant Reader - subject-veniceItaly-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 2021-05-25 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 10 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,482,895 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 148,289 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:

venetians, great, time, king, might, made, pope, much, venice, men, one, hee, french, many, sent, venetian, make, duke, forces, enemies, peace, gallies, come, first, army, senate, common, two, good, hauing, taken, yet, sea, well, place, vpon, haue, without, came, princes, state, things, fleet, will, italy, war, now, new, citie, warre

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The generall historie of the magnificent state of Venice From the first foundation thereof vntill this present. Collected by Thomas de Fougasses, gentleman of Auignon, out of all authors, both ancient and moderne, that haue written of that subiect. Englished by VV. Shute. Gent., The history of Venice ... written originally in Italian by Paulo Paruta ... ; likewise the wars of Cyprus, by the same authour, wherein the famous sieges of Nicossia, and Famagosta, and Battel of Lepanto are contained ; made English by Henry, Earl of Monmouth., and A survay of the signorie of Venice, of her admired policy, and method of government, &c. with a cohortation to all Christian princes to resent her dangerous condition at present / by James Howell Esq..

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

french king, meane time, christian princes, great numbers, long time, light horse, yet neuerthelesse, thousand foot, two thousand, don iohn, turkish fleet, nauall armie, three hundred, haue beene, make warre, french kings, venetian senate, two hundred, hauing intelligence, make use, might easily, one side, short space, next day, great forces, venetian armie, whole fleet, take armes, fiue hundred, thousand men, one time, three thousand, venetian fleet, hundred horse, venetian army, thousand horse, sent thither, whole army, king lewis, might make, great number, peace betwixt, come thither, french army, great preparations, firme land, venetian gallies, hee might, good will, great store

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The benefit of the ballot, with nature and use thereof particularly in the Republick of Venice. The opinion of Padre Paolo of the Order of the Servites, consultor of state given to the Lords the Inquisitors of state, in what manner the republick of Venice ought to govern themselves both at home and abroad, to have perpetual dominion., and Advice given to the Republick of Venice how they ought to govern themselves both at home and abroad, to have perpetual dominion / first written in Italian by that great politician and lover of his countrey, Father Paul the Venetian, author of the Council of Trent ; translated into English by Dr. Aglionby ; dedicated to His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland..

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:

state, king, prince, venetians, sea, pope, government, french, emperour, duke, council, church, christian, war, venice, venetian, tcp, power, nobility, italy, generall, gallies, france, fleet, empire, city, army, world, turks, turkish, town, spaniards, souldiers, signory, senators, senate, senat, republick, people, mark, lord, league, law, land, island, grand, god, fort, facility, dominions

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 venetians, and The history of the government of Venice wherein the policies, councils, magistrates, and laws of that state are fully related, and the use of the balloting box exactly described : written in the year 1675 / by the sieur Amelott de la Houssaie ... 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, enemies, forces, peace, place, things, hee, wealth, reason, part, others, end, day, people, side, way, places, man, occasion, warre, diuers, war, danger, manner, army, thing, nothing, meanes, enemie, themselues, rest, number, souldiers, horse, thence, certaine, power, hauing, death, enemy, times, kings, soone, name, king, purpose, opinion, state, league

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, were, had, be, being, did, is, made, are, have, sent, make, come, taken, came, having, went, take, done, do, said, thought, been, hauing, brought, put, send, called, according, betwixt, commanded, say, haue, began, lay, set, making, bee, keep, see, go, fight, beeing, held, defend, left, caused, given, comming, give

Proper Nouns

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

venetians, king, pope, venice, duke, senate, venetian, gallies, princes, italy, citie, sea, emperour, france, prince, french, army, fleet, rome, milan, generall, armie, hee, ◊, 〉, city, state, turks, emperor, haue, league, 〈, church, sforza, ●, popes, constantinople, war, naples, turkes, cesar, genoueses, enemy, senat, hath, castle, beene, island, verona, warre

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?"

his, they, he, their, it, them, him, her, our, we, i, you, themselves, himself, she, your, us, my, me, its, theirs, vp, one, thy, ours, thee, mine, us''d, vvhat, hee, yours, whereof, vnto, herself, yee, hers, ye, severall, elias, †, trye, therevnto, stirr''d, o, march''d, l, yeelde, y, wh, vvith

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, same, common, such, good, more, much, new, french, first, whole, own, greater, little, last, able, long, meane, desirous, particular, better, small, strong, venetian, most, former, least, ready, few, ancient, present, certain, next, true, greatest, sundry, safe, turkish, like, old, free, himselfe, several, light, short, second, open, sufficient

not, so, then, very, more, much, well, as, now, likewise, there, therefore, out, yet, forth, together, most, only, thereof, first, afterwards, neere, also, already, still, up, rather, long, onely, thus, greatly, before, away, off, easily, speedily, often, too, thereby, almost, soon, never, presently, therein, in, else, far, after, formerly, on

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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