Distant Reader - subject-voyages-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 37 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 4,555,244 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 123,114 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 95. 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:

great, one, two, many, made, us, men, much, also, time, came, day, like, good, sea, may, place, yet, king, make, three, called, little, well, water, first, without, land, found, will, come, people, another, man, now, way, part, long, haue, might, see, went, leagues, side, others, ship, small, night, parts, sent

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Purchas his pilgrimes. part 4 In fiue bookes. The first, contayning the voyages and peregrinations made by ancient kings, patriarkes, apostles, philosophers, and others, to and thorow the remoter parts of the knowne world: enquiries also of languages and religions, especially of the moderne diuersified professions of Christianitie. The second, a description of all the circum-nauigations of the globe. The third, nauigations and voyages of English-men, alongst the coasts of Africa ... The fourth, English voyages beyond the East Indies, to the ilands of Iapan, China, Cauchinchina, the Philippinæ with others ... The fifth, nauigations, voyages, traffiques, discoueries, of the English nation in the easterne parts of the world ... The first part., The voyages and travells of the ambassadors sent by Frederick, Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia begun in the year M.DC.XXXIII. and finish''d in M.DC.XXXIX : containing a compleat history of Muscovy, Tartary, Persia, and other adjacent countries : with several publick transactions reaching near the present times : in VII. books. Whereto are added the Travels of John Albert de Mandelslo (a gentleman belonging to the embassy) from Persia into the East-Indies ... in III. books ... / written originally by Adam Olearius, secretary to the embassy ; faithfully rendered into English, by John Davies., and The voyages and adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal, during his travels for the space of one and twenty years in the Kingdoms of Ethiopia, China, Tartaria, Cauchinchina, Calaminham, Siam, Pegu, Japan, and a great part of the East-Indiaes with a relation and description of most of the places thereof, their religion, laws, riches, customs, and government in time of peace and war : where he five times suffered shipwrack, was sixteen times sold, and thirteen times made a slave / written originally by himself in the Portugal tongue and dedicated to the Majesty of Philip King of Spain ; done into English by H.C. Gent..

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

next day, great number, two hundred, every one, great store, one another, next morning, three hundred, many times, fresh water, great duke, mean time, told us, one day, great many, one side, one hundred, de faria, make use, every day, antonio de, two leagues, right hand, vnto vs, great deal, haue beene, three dayes, hundred thousand, west indies, long time, set sail, cast anchor, several sorts, set forth, three leagues, short time, th day, south sea, two dayes, thousand men, much like, foot long, five hundred, nothing else, monsieur de, must needs, de la, hundred leagues, may see, precious stones

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Purchas his pilgrimes. part 4 In fiue bookes. The first, contayning the voyages and peregrinations made by ancient kings, patriarkes, apostles, philosophers, and others, to and thorow the remoter parts of the knowne world: enquiries also of languages and religions, especially of the moderne diuersified professions of Christianitie. The second, a description of all the circum-nauigations of the globe. The third, nauigations and voyages of English-men, alongst the coasts of Africa ... The fourth, English voyages beyond the East Indies, to the ilands of Iapan, China, Cauchinchina, the Philippinæ with others ... The fifth, nauigations, voyages, traffiques, discoueries, of the English nation in the easterne parts of the world ... The first part. Voyages and travels over all Europe Containing all that is most curious in that part of the world. In eight tomes. Done out of French., and A new discovery of Terra incognita Australis, or, The southern world, by James Sadeur, a French-man, who being cast there by a shipwrack, lived 35 years in that country and gives a particular description of the manners, customs, religion, laws, studies and wars of those southern people, and of some animals peculiar to that place ... translated from the French copy ....

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:

sea, island, king, english, country, river, east, south, ship, god, court, city, lord, church, world, water, town, sun, prince, men, tcp, north, man, land, west, people, company, coast, temple, religion, master, father, duke, isle, countrey, cape, spaniards, son, indians, house, fort, fleet, emperour, captaine, captain, voyage, turks, trees, palace, inhabitants

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 great, and Voyages and travels over all Europe Containing all that is most curious in that part of the world. In eight tomes. Done out of French. 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, day, place, people, way, part, man, others, side, water, parts, night, leagues, things, reason, rest, ship, manner, self, thing, places, end, ships, land, nothing, t, thence, body, name, number, ground, country, women, death, times, course, wind, fish, hand, order, dayes, sorts, houses, hands, gold, hee, company, foot, year

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, was, are, had, be, were, have, being, made, came, make, called, did, found, said, having, do, come, went, see, been, sent, take, brought, saw, go, put, set, taken, say, call, done, told, know, took, give, left, seen, according, hath, got, haue, thought, gave, get, lay, kept, carried, heard, find

Proper Nouns

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

sea, king, god, city, wee, river, indians, island, south, land, west, north, s., c., east, english, 〉, ●, de, town, spaniards, lord, haue, 〈, hath, master, captain, riuer, ◊, water, cape, captaine, coast, prince, england, countrey, whereof, country, men, sir, towne, bay, world, d., w., iland, court, sun, o., house

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, it, their, i, his, he, we, them, our, him, my, us, her, me, you, she, themselves, its, himself, your, thy, one, thee, ''em, ours, theirs, vp, mine, vnto, whereof, ian, em, us''d, yours, hers, itself, ourselves, dy''d, herself, ''s, ay, there, l, s, hee, vvith, punish''d, myself, ●, march''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?"

great, other, many, good, such, same, little, more, much, small, several, first, most, own, long, high, next, full, certain, large, whole, last, best, white, few, able, new, old, true, better, strong, particular, greatest, rich, like, least, greater, second, young, short, fresh, strange, fair, dead, former, common, black, ready, pleasant, present

not, so, very, then, also, there, as, well, more, up, now, much, here, out, most, only, about, together, away, in, yet, before, again, off, onely, never, therefore, all, thus, first, down, long, thereof, still, sometimes, far, rather, almost, ever, presently, too, over, often, forth, especially, likewise, soon, no, vs, afterwards

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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