Distant Reader - subject-witchcraft-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 64 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 3,194,882 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 49,920 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 93. 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, one, may, will, man, yet, things, men, many, shall, power, vnto, also, great, doth, witches, first, made, time, witch, good, like, therefore, now, much, make, saith, say, devil, must, nature, people, haue, spirit, though, hee, us, true, without, thing, spirits, words, another, place, two, might, lord, come, others, body

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The admirable history of the posession and conuersion of a penitent woman Seduced by a magician that made her to become a witch, and the princesse of sorcerers in the country of Prouince, who was brought to S. Baume to bee exorcised, in the yeare 1610, in the moneth of Nouember, by the authority of the reuerend father, and frier, Sebastian Michaëlis, priour of the couent royall of S. Magdalene at Saint Maximin, and also of the said place of Saint Baume. Who appointed the reuerend father, Frier Francis Domptius, Doctor of Diuinity, in the Vniuersity of Louaine, ... for the exorcismes and recollection of the acts. All faithfully set down, and fully verified. Wherunto is annexed a pneumology, or discourse of spirits made by the said father Michaëlis, ... Translated into English by W.B., The hierarchie of the blessed angells Their names, orders and offices the fall of Lucifer with his angells written by Tho: Heywood, and The discovery of witchcraft proving that the compacts and contracts of witches with devils and all infernal spirits or familiars are but erroneous novelties and imaginary conceptions : also discovering, how far their power extendeth in killing, tormenting, consuming, or curing the bodies of men, women, children, or animals by charms, philtres, periapts, pentacles, curses, and conjurations : wherein likewise the unchristian practices and inhumane dealings of searchers and witch-tryers upon aged, melancholly, and superstitious people, in extorting confessions by terrors and tortures, and in devising false marks and symptoms, are notably detected ... : in sixteen books / by Reginald Scot ... ; whereunto is added an excellent Discourse of the nature and substance of devils and spirits, in two books : the first by the aforesaid author, the second now added in this third edition ... conducing to the compleating of the whole work, with nine chapters at the beginning of the fifteenth [sic] book of The discovery..

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

must needs, holy ghost, early english, english books, many things, eternal nature, may bee, let vs, many times, let us, books online, evil spirits, tells us, christ iesus, one another, holy spirit, every man, strange things, jesus christ, every one, take away, vnto vs, god doth, page images, nothing else, one man, holy trinity, man may, text creation, creation partnership, iesus christ, taken away, brought forth, familiar spirit, vnto god, haue beene, long time, next day, young man, learned men, right hand, holy scripture, one day, one thing, take notice, will say, shall see, evil spirit, god himselfe, god will

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are We have brought our hogs to a fair market: or, Strange newes from New-Gate; being a most pleasant and historical narrative, of Captain James Hind, never before published, of his merry pranks, witty jests, unparallel''d attempts, and strange designs. With his orders, instructions, and decree, to all his royal gang, and fraternity; the appearing of a strange vision on Munday morning last, with a crown upon his head; the speech and command that were then given to Cap. Hind; and the manner how it vanished away. As also how he was enchanted by a witch at Hatfield, for the space of three years; and how she switch''d his horse with a white rod, and gave him a thing like a sun-diall, the point of which should direct him which way to take when persued. With his speech; the old hags charm; and the raising of the Devil in the likeness of a lyon; to the great admiration and wonder of all that shall read the same. A brief relation of the strange and unnatural practices of Wessel Goodwin, Mehetabell Jones the wife of Edward Jones, and Elizabeth Pigeon the wife of John Pigeon., and Wonderfull newes from the north. Or, A true relation of the sad and grievous torments, inflicted upon the bodies of three children of Mr. George Muschamp, late of the county of Northumberland, by witch-craft: and how miraculously it pleased God to strengthen them, and to deliver them: as also the prosecution of the sayd witches, as by oaths, and their own confessions will appear, and by the indictment found by the jury against one of them, at the sessions of the peace held at Alnwick, the 24. day of April, 1650. Novemb. 25. 1650. Imprimatur, John Dovvname..

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, witch, lord, devil, tcp, witches, spirit, man, christ, world, king, church, power, house, witchcraft, nature, law, father, body, art, scripture, diuell, children, book, angels, chap, spirits, satan, woman, thing, scriptures, haue, gods, earth, author, wife, sorcerers, saints, people, nations, men, maid, iesus, holy, ghost, english, devill, court, boy, bodies

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 Scot''s Discovery of vvitchcraft proving the common opinions of witches contracting with divels, spirits, or familiars ... to be but imaginary, erronious conceptions and novelties : wherein also, the lewde unchristian all written and published in anno 1584, by Reginald Scot, Esquire. 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?":

things, man, men, time, power, people, witches, thing, words, others, place, body, reason, doth, nature, day, part, nothing, way, witch, truth, hand, times, death, hath, name, word, manner, world, hee, life, end, art, self, matter, house, persons, spirits, knowledge, cause, woman, night, none, bodies, opinion, fire, one, person, spirit, purpose

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, said, did, do, made, been, make, say, come, take, called, see, done, came, know, found, let, vnto, according, put, brought, give, taken, concerning, hath, set, go, told, think, haue, having, read, heard, am, sent, thought, bee, went, given, find, learned, saw, tell

Proper Nouns

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

god, 〉, ◊, 〈, c., devil, hath, thou, lord, spirit, witch, christ, king, ●, mr., spirits, de, angels, chap, diuell, satan, haue, law, doe, father, witches, lib, holy, nature, hee, witchcraft, s., world, gods, power, church, bee, man, wee, house, devils, book, l., magdalene, saint, yea, government, saul, tcp, samuel

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, he, his, they, their, i, them, her, him, she, we, you, our, my, me, us, your, himself, themselves, thy, thee, its, one, vp, theirs, mine, itself, vnto, ours, ye, herself, hers, yours, ''em, ''s, whereof, ourselves, miself, em, s, ●, ha, thou, hee, non, †, ne, ♓, yee, whosoever

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, great, same, good, true, more, first, own, much, little, strange, common, whole, saith, last, like, most, certain, old, several, able, second, wicked, false, present, holy, least, particular, former, natural, dead, full, doth, manifest, very, better, next, wise, third, sufficient, few, best, new, greater, right, evil, long, poor

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

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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