In 1891, Patrick Henry’s speeches and correspondence were published. So I found the text version online and had some fun with Wordle. It would be interesting to do the same with George Mason (fellow antifederalist), Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, etc. and then compare. I’m not too surprised with this one, particularly with the large size of “Virginia.” But I have done a lot of research on Henry. I am surprised “Lord” is so small considering how religious Henry was. Thoughts?
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What’s interesting to me is how small “Independence” and “Liberty” are. Those are two words we associate with Henry from the first time we learn about him and it looks like they barely came up. I got nothing on the religious aspect. One thing this has shown me is that what we get is often not what we expect.
zayna
I would be interested in seeing the cloud when you take out Patrick and Henry. I am guessing they are there because the format of the works had his name on the top of all pages? They are so large they hide and marginalize the relationship to the other words.
From a historians point of view, this is not concrete data that can be used for much (unless you are Foucault then you can probably make a career out of it.) However, the insight into what people emphasized in their writing can cause us to rethink our assumptions and opens up lines of new lines of inquiry.
We have to be cautious about drawing conclusions of importance from these clouds. I took a course on Ancient Egypt once and found out the archeologists could not find any written words on how to mummify something. This was a very important part of Egyptian belief and something they obviously spent inordinate resources on – yet there is no writing about it. Was it so well known they did not think they had to write about it? Was it so sacred they were prohibited from writing about it? I guess what I am trying to say is that the absence or repetitiveness of word does not automatically imply importance.
This also isn’t very useful because it includes William Wirt’s commentary and biography of Henry; a fact I overlooked at 11:30 at night. Still an interesting experiment, though.