Distant Reader - subject-kentEngland-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 14 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 294,488 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 21,034 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 86. 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:

county, st, church, part, division, canterbury, hundred, lath, towards, called, liberty, one, king, east, west, de, land, two, justices, time, bailiwick, much, also, day, neer, miles, place, diocess, kent, distant, since, deanry, parish, rochester, may, lieth, mr, year, now, town, late, years, thereof, great, sir, first, many, claimeth, will, made

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A topographie or survey of the county of Kent with some chronological, historicall, and other matters touching the same, and the several parishes and places therein / by Richard Kilburne of Hawkherst, Esquire., A treatise of gavelkind, both name and thing. Shewing the true etymologie and derivation of the one, the nature, antiquity, and original of the other. With sundry emergent observations, both pleasant and profitable to be known of Kentish-men and others, especially such as are studious, either of the ancient custome, or the common law of this kingdome. By (a well-willer to both) William Somner., and A treatise of the Roman ports and forts in Kent by William Somner ; publish''d by James Brome ... ; to which is prefixt, The life of Mr. Somner..

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

called st, east division, years since, lieth towards, west division, late archbishop, three miles, king hen, two miles, canterbury claimeth, church standeth, part thereof, upper division, late dean, new romney, cinque ports, augustine claimeth, romney marsh, much thereof, english books, early english, east part, one mile, books online, per annum, foure miles, river medway, two constables, south division, late bishop, king henry, north side, east side, lower division, river stoure, west malling, neer dovor, called saint, church canterbury, king edward, sutton bromley, common law, one constable, four miles, five miles, king edw, neer feversham, sutton dartford, milton neer, twentieth day

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are To the right honourable the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament. The humble petition of many of the gentry, ministers, free-holders, and other inhabitants of the county of Kent, and the cities of olders, and other inhabitants of the county of Kent, and the cities of Canterbury and Rochester, and county of Canterbury, with the Cinque Ports, and their members, and other corporations within the said county. A treatise of gavelkind, both name and thing. Shewing the true etymologie and derivation of the one, the nature, antiquity, and original of the other. With sundry emergent observations, both pleasant and profitable to be known of Kentish-men and others, especially such as are studious, either of the ancient custome, or the common law of this kingdome. By (a well-willer to both) William Somner., and The declaration of Sir Thomas Glenham, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and Sir Philip Musgrave, in the north of England concerning the counties of Essex and Kent and their resolution and proceedings thereupon; as also touching the Army. Likewise a great fight at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, betwixt the Parliaments forces and the Cavaliers, and the number that were slain and taken prisoners; as also, the taking of the said castle, with all the ordnance, armes, and ammunition. With a list of the chief commanders belonging to the Parliaments forces. Col. Fairfax. Col. Roads. Col. Bethel. Col. Aldred. Col. Legere.. [sic] Col. Cholmley. Col. Lassels. Col. Wastell..

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:

county, canterbury, sir, king, church, town, tcp, saxon, romney, petition, parliament, lord, laws, lambard, kingdome, iohn, hen, english, castle, army, writ, william, west, weald, thynn, tenure, tenants, sutton, statute, st., south, souldiers, somner, soke, socage, sheriff, sea, sandwich, roman, rochester, river, rebellion, port, philpot, party, partition, parish, officers, north, mr.

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 county, and By the King. His Majesties proclamation forbidding all His loving subjects of the counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, to raise any forces without His Majesties consent or to enter into any association or protestation for the assistance of the Rebellion against His Majesty. 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?":

part, division, liberty, p., land, time, day, miles, place, year, years, neer, name, claimeth, men, side, viz, service, lands, ad, half, way, others, text, man, hath, thence, nature, ▪, self, places, end, standeth, times, t, middle, words, residue, church, work, river, thing, word, liberties, night, house, sea, gentlemen, whence, parts

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, is, be, were, called, have, being, had, are, been, made, said, having, given, gave, kept, did, put, hath, taken, give, came, make, take, 〈, found, say, do, add, see, according, began, set, let, left, neer, sent, read, has, built, know, find, took, founded, command, conceive, granted, done, am, come

Proper Nouns

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

〉, ◊, 〈, county, st., church, canterbury, lath, ●, king, east, west, bailiwick, justices, de, kent, diocess, rochester, deanry, c., parish, mr., lieth, sir, town, augustine, archbishop, north, saxon, romney, william, maidstone, south, castle, lord, sutton, sheriff, iohn, gavelkynd, mannour, henry, sandwich, l., somner, bridge, hen, thomas, england, aylesford, river

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, i, their, he, they, them, our, we, him, my, us, you, themselves, me, your, himself, its, her, she, thy, theirs, one, whereof, thee, severall, mine, ours, itself, ian, vvest, us''d, k, ib, herciscundae, haply, brevity, amaz''d

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?"

same, other, distant, such, many, late, great, old, first, much, own, more, whole, like, good, next, little, upper, last, ancient, former, most, new, true, least, second, common, several, large, high, constable, certain, present, third, aforesaid, original, english, early, better, small, honourable, latter, free, particular, famous, general, few, best, full, long

not, so, there, about, then, also, here, now, thereof, very, as, more, thus, afterwards, much, out, up, otherwise, most, onely, well, indeed, twice, yet, antiently, often, in, first, before, away, only, yearly, never, still, therefore, rather, over, down, lately, especially, too, ever, again, together, off, long, far, likewise, formerly, enough

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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