Distant Reader - subject-bermudaIslands-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 6 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 309,370 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 51,561 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:

haue, one, men, many, will, much, two, yet, great, vs, like, good, captaine, may, well, england, three, time, made, sir, make, also, now, though, god, new, first, long, people, sent, shall, man, till, hundred, found, master, vpon, company, virginia, small, called, beene, water, little, english, doe, iohn, thomas, king, fish

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning. an⁰: 1584. to this present 1624. With the procedings of those severall colonies and the accidents that befell them in all their journyes and discoveries. Also the maps and descriptions of all those countryes, their commodities, people, government, customes, and religion yet knowne. Divided into sixe bookes. By Captaine Iohn Smith sometymes governour in those countryes & admirall of New England., A true and faithful account of the four chiefest plantations of the English in America to wit, of Virginia, New-England, Bermudus, Barbados : with the temperature of the air, the nature of the soil, the rivers, mountains, beasts, fowls, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits, &c. : as also, of the natives of Virginia, and New-England, their religion, customs, fishing, hunting, &c. / collected by Samuel Clarke ..., and A fresh discovery of some prodigious new wandring-blasing-stars, & firebrands, stiling themselves nevv-lights, firing our church and state into new combustions. Divided into ten sections, comprising severall most libellous, scandalous, seditious, insolent, uncharitable, (and some blasphemous) passages; published in late unlicensed printed pamphlets, against the ecclesiasticall jurisdiction and power of parliaments, councels, synods, Christian kings and magistrates, in generall; the ordinances and proceedings of this present Parliament, in speciall: the national covenant, assembly, directory, our brethren of Scotland, Presbyterian government; the Church of England, with her ministers, worship; the opposers of independent novelties; ... Whereunto some letters and papers lately sent from the Sommer-Islands, are subjoyned, relating the schismaticall, illegal, tyrannical proceedings of some Independents there, in gathering their new-churches, to the great distraction and prejudice of that plantation. / Published for the common good by William Prynne of Lincolnes Inne, Esquire..

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

sir thomas, iames towne, haue beene, captaine smith, one hundred, next day, new england, three hundred, sir george, two hundred, sir iohn, thomas dale, thomas gates, iohn smith, foot high, captaine iohn, english books, early english, set saile, thomas smith, haue done, next morning, great store, euery man, sir francis, hundred pound, fiue hundred, every one, captaine newport, honourable company, master iohn, diuers others, may see, west indies, two dayes, hundred men, anno christi, much like, books online, sir simon, fresh water, short time, pleased god, many times, cast away, haue made, smith treasurer, lord la, long time, captaine argall

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A fresh discovery of some prodigious new wandring-blasing-stars, & firebrands, stiling themselves nevv-lights, firing our church and state into new combustions. Divided into ten sections, comprising severall most libellous, scandalous, seditious, insolent, uncharitable, (and some blasphemous) passages; published in late unlicensed printed pamphlets, against the ecclesiasticall jurisdiction and power of parliaments, councels, synods, Christian kings and magistrates, in generall; the ordinances and proceedings of this present Parliament, in speciall: the national covenant, assembly, directory, our brethren of Scotland, Presbyterian government; the Church of England, with her ministers, worship; the opposers of independent novelties; ... Whereunto some letters and papers lately sent from the Sommer-Islands, are subjoyned, relating the schismaticall, illegal, tyrannical proceedings of some Independents there, in gathering their new-churches, to the great distraction and prejudice of that plantation. / Published for the common good by William Prynne of Lincolnes Inne, Esquire. Servants on horse-back, or, A free-people bestrided in their persons and liberties, by worthlesse men being a representation of the dejected state of the inhabitants of Summer Islands : containing short illustrations upon a petition presented to the High Court of Parliament for redresse / published by Will. Golding ..., and A true and faithful account of the four chiefest plantations of the English in America to wit, of Virginia, New-England, Bermudus, Barbados : with the temperature of the air, the nature of the soil, the rivers, mountains, beasts, fowls, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits, &c. : as also, of the natives of Virginia, and New-England, their religion, customs, fishing, hunting, &c. / collected by Samuel Clarke ....

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:

virginia, england, company, west, tcp, sea, parliament, north, new, lord, land, god, english, country, bay, assembly, winter, william, trees, treasurer, town, thomas, synod, sun, sugar, state, spaniards, south, smith, sir, shares, sectaries, salvage, saluages, river, riuer, richard, religion, president, powhatan, plantation, pil, petition, ordinance, negroes, ministers, master, leave, kingdome, king

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 haue, and A true and faithful account of the four chiefest plantations of the English in America to wit, of Virginia, New-England, Bermudus, Barbados : with the temperature of the air, the nature of the soil, the rivers, mountains, beasts, fowls, birds, fishes, trees, plants, fruits, &c. : as also, of the natives of Virginia, and New-England, their religion, customs, fishing, hunting, &c. / collected by Samuel Clarke ... 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, time, people, man, water, others, place, ship, part, things, rest, day, fish, ships, power, trees, manner, places, ground, p., themselues, thing, way, house, land, houses, foure, children, nothing, company, night, friends, shore, shares, country, world, tree, women, parts, hee, persons, none, againe, sorts, order, head, hands, miles, side, meanes

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, had, were, have, being, made, make, sent, did, found, haue, called, came, come, set, see, take, know, returned, went, having, brought, done, put, left, say, call, do, taken, been, according, bring, let, hath, seeing, tooke, heard, got, doe, said, saw, caused, desired, spent, hauing, thought, cut

Proper Nouns

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

captaine, england, sir, god, haue, master, virginia, thomas, iohn, smith, king, hath, sea, english, church, parliament, c., new, m., beene, william, wee, company, saluages, ●, doe, powhatan, lord, corne, mr., george, assembly, richard, west, bay, country, vs, island, countrey, islands, councell, tobacco, governour, hee, owne, goe, president, henry, fort, pag

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?"

they, their, it, them, his, he, we, i, our, him, you, my, your, her, me, she, us, themselves, thy, its, ours, himself, theirs, vp, thee, yours, one, mine, whereof, vnto, s, itself, hee, 〈, ye, o, lye, hers, ''s

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?"

many, such, other, great, good, more, much, small, little, most, first, next, long, best, new, same, better, true, large, few, high, haue, last, whole, young, old, strange, full, white, like, sufficient, present, own, common, dead, least, able, greatest, excellent, second, strong, big, worthy, english, honourable, ready, seditious, third, fresh, sweet

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

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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