Not Reading a Victorian Novel
I will not be reading "A Study in Scarlet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was written in 1886 and published in 1887 in the United Kingdom. This novel is one of the many Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson adventures that was written by Doyle.
First my predictions:
I think that there will a sense of adventure throughout the novel. This adventure will include dangerous and harrowing moments of near death. There will be plenty of examples of Sherlock Holmes's deductive genius as he solves crimes and makes assumptions. The setting of the novel will be in London and this book will give a good historical representation of the Victorian era. John Watson will be a pristine English gentleman and Sherlock Holmes will be eccentric. There will be lots of talk about murder and death. There will be fight scenes. A character will die. I expect the words "elementary" and "deduce" to be used often.
I decided to analyze the first section of the novel (chapters 1-5) first to get a grasp of how Voyant tools worked. I gathered very little from the most common words used in the first section. "Said," "man," "Holmes," "little," and "Sherlock" were the most commonly written words. After exploring some other tools, I found that the word bubble visualizer was a lot of fun and very helpful to understanding the text more.
It looks chaotic, but shows the word companion as a top ten word in the first section of the novel. I predicted that this book would have harrowing adventure but I failed to assume that companionship would play a major role. The core of the story is the partnership and symbiotic relationship of Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the unlikely and seemingly perfect pair.
After reaching some dead ends in exploring the Voyant tools and the first section of this novel, I decided to use a smaller chunk of text to analyze. I used chapters five and six.
I noticed that common phrases were of men introducing themselves or applying titles to their names like "Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland" and "Mr. Gregson of Scotland Yard." This exemplifies the formality of the Victorian era in the United Kingdom.
I think that the experience of using tools and context cues to "read" or "distance read" a novel is fun, but unsatisfying. If anything, this exercise has made me want to pick up this novel and read it in its entirety even more now that I have explored it a little with these Voyant tools. And though the tools on this site can offer some insight as to what the novel is about, what kind of language is used, and common words that are chosen, it is not a proper supplement for reading the book outright. I have spent a few hours exploring the tools offered by Voyant to further analyze this text, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered. Of course this is a much faster and effecient way of examining the basic details of a text without pouring the necessary time to get through an entire novel. So there are pros and cons with this method of reading. I thought that Voyant tools were very interested and visually exciting to play with and read into, especially when I spent the proper time to understand what the different tools could accomplish.
First my predictions:
I think that there will a sense of adventure throughout the novel. This adventure will include dangerous and harrowing moments of near death. There will be plenty of examples of Sherlock Holmes's deductive genius as he solves crimes and makes assumptions. The setting of the novel will be in London and this book will give a good historical representation of the Victorian era. John Watson will be a pristine English gentleman and Sherlock Holmes will be eccentric. There will be lots of talk about murder and death. There will be fight scenes. A character will die. I expect the words "elementary" and "deduce" to be used often.
I decided to analyze the first section of the novel (chapters 1-5) first to get a grasp of how Voyant tools worked. I gathered very little from the most common words used in the first section. "Said," "man," "Holmes," "little," and "Sherlock" were the most commonly written words. After exploring some other tools, I found that the word bubble visualizer was a lot of fun and very helpful to understanding the text more.
After reaching some dead ends in exploring the Voyant tools and the first section of this novel, I decided to use a smaller chunk of text to analyze. I used chapters five and six.
I think that the experience of using tools and context cues to "read" or "distance read" a novel is fun, but unsatisfying. If anything, this exercise has made me want to pick up this novel and read it in its entirety even more now that I have explored it a little with these Voyant tools. And though the tools on this site can offer some insight as to what the novel is about, what kind of language is used, and common words that are chosen, it is not a proper supplement for reading the book outright. I have spent a few hours exploring the tools offered by Voyant to further analyze this text, but there are still many questions that remain unanswered. Of course this is a much faster and effecient way of examining the basic details of a text without pouring the necessary time to get through an entire novel. So there are pros and cons with this method of reading. I thought that Voyant tools were very interested and visually exciting to play with and read into, especially when I spent the proper time to understand what the different tools could accomplish.
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