I used Voyant Tools to analyze a text from Alan Liu’s Data Collections and Datasets. The text that I chose is The Prelude, 1850 version, below is the analysis of the text.
This corpus has 14 documents with 58,377 total words and 8,087 unique word forms. Created now.
Document Length:
- Longest: book06 (5722); book07 (5615); book08 (5046); book01 (4808); book03 (4663)
- Shortest: book12 (2473); book13 (2794); book14 (3338); book11 (3489); book02 (3500)
Vocabulary Density:
- Highest: book12 (0.406); book13 (0.384); book14 (0.382); book07 (0.379); book04 (0.378)
- Lowest: book06 (0.350); book05 (0.350); book01 (0.356); book02 (0.361); book10 (0.368)
Average Words Per Sentence:
- Highest: book13 (53.7); book09 (50.0); book12 (49.5); book10 (49.1); book05 (48.9)
- Lowest: book02 (37.6); book03 (39.2); book07 (41.3); book06 (42.7); book11 (43.6)
Readability Index:
- Highest: book07 (8.844); book01 (8.708); book08 (8.515); book02 (8.482); book06 (8.369)
- Lowest: book04 (7.717); book05 (7.785); book09 (7.972); book11 (8.160); book12 (8.171)
Most frequent words in the corpus: like (162); time (145); mind (132); life (123); love (120)
Distinctive words (compared to the rest of the corpus):
- book01: wallace (3), frost (3), flying (3), wheeled (2), tempest (2).
- book02: sweetly (3), sang (4), flew (3), earthly (3), wave (2).
- book03: easy (4), quit (3), lack (3), college (3), witless (2).
- book04: vows (2), sweetest (2), straightway (2), staid (2), smiled (2).
- book05: arab (5), shell (3), food (4), redoubled (2), precious (2).
- book06: current (4), peasant (3), paths (3), flowing (3), clomb (3).
- book07: parts (4), giants (3), mien (4), london (5), wonders (3).
- book08: vice (5), sees (6), tract (3), shepherds (3), imperial (3).
- book09: discourse (4), france (6), worst (4), patriot (4), frequent (4).
- book10: robespierre (5), charge (4), england (3), crimes (3), woful (2).
- Next 4 of 4 remaining
The text analysis I received from the Voyant Tool or from distant reading is not something I am very familiar with. Therefore, I don’t believe I can interpret the analysis as well as somebody who may be more familiar with the practice. It gave me a lot of data information about the text but that is not something I would normally look for or use. I definitely would not have arrived at this same interpretation via close reading. Close reading is something I have experience with and something I have a better understanding of. Distant reading gives very different information that one cannot get via close reading.
