Cultural Representation
caitlin feltus
4/19/2021
Import data
library(readtext)## Warning: package 'readtext' was built under R version 4.0.5library(dplyr)## Warning: package 'dplyr' was built under R version 4.0.3poems_hunter <- readtext("~//madness/poems_hunter/*") %>% tibble()
poems_hunter## # A tibble: 10 x 2
## doc_id text
## <chr> <chr>
## 1 1_Hunter_2009.t~ "It's A Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) World\nWh~
## 2 10_Hunter_2008.~ "Mad Mad World\n\nthe world is mad\ninsane!\nchristians fig~
## 3 2_Hunter_2014.t~ "What Is This Mad Race Of The Mad-Mad Modern Man?\n\nWhat i~
## 4 3_Hunter_2009.t~ "It Is A Mad, Mad, Mad World.........\n\nMoon is gone\nbut ~
## 5 4_Hunter_2014.t~ "Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Will Madden Me And You/ You Poetry~
## 6 5_Hunter_2014.t~ "The Poets Are The Mad Men And Poetry A Mad Man's Babbling\~
## 7 6_Hunter_2013.t~ "A Mad Mad Mothers Mistake\n\nLeft left not right she's lef~
## 8 7_Hunter_2010.t~ "Thoughts In Madness, Madness In Thought\n\nMy days are mad~
## 9 8_Hunter_2012.t~ "Traces Of Madness (Madman's Song)\n\nYou would have said, ~
## 10 9_Hunter_2010.t~ "If Mad Is A Hatter Then Mad Am I\n\nIf mad is a hatter the~poems_victorian <- readtext("~//madness/poems_victorian/*") %>% tibble()
poems_victorian## # A tibble: 10 x 2
## doc_id text
## <chr> <chr>
## 1 1_Victorian_1850.~ "THE BALLAD OF RICHARD BURNELL.\n\nFrom his bed rose Rich~
## 2 10_Victorian_1820~ "The following touching Verses are taken from a Newcastle~
## 3 2_Victorian_1820.~ "THE BRANCHERS.*\n\n1.\nI sat to bask, one sunny morn,\n1~
## 4 3_Victorian_1890.~ "THE BALLAD OF THE KING’S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime flus~
## 5 4_Victorian_1850.~ "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell ! For the love of~
## 6 5_Victorian_1820.~ "STANZAS.\n\n“ —— And muttered, lost ! lost ! lost ~
## 7 6_Victorian_1860.~ "XV.—THE MOTHER’S LAMENT.\n\nWhen I was young, when I~
## 8 7_Victorian_1880.~ "A Stray Sunbeam.\n\nA\nSUNBEAM gone astray\n1\nUpon life~
## 9 8_Victorian_1870.~ "LADY NOEL BYRON.\n\nA\nND as she spoke, it seemed as tho~
## 10 9_Victorian_1840.~ "The Auld State Kirk.\nNEW SONG.\nTune—“ Auld Lang Sy~Join datasets
poems_raw <- rbind(poems_hunter, poems_victorian)
poems_raw## # A tibble: 20 x 2
## doc_id text
## <chr> <chr>
## 1 1_Hunter_2009.txt "It's A Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) World\n~
## 2 10_Hunter_2008.txt "Mad Mad World\n\nthe world is mad\ninsane!\nchristians f~
## 3 2_Hunter_2014.txt "What Is This Mad Race Of The Mad-Mad Modern Man?\n\nWhat~
## 4 3_Hunter_2009.txt "It Is A Mad, Mad, Mad World.........\n\nMoon is gone\nbu~
## 5 4_Hunter_2014.txt "Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Will Madden Me And You/ You Poet~
## 6 5_Hunter_2014.txt "The Poets Are The Mad Men And Poetry A Mad Man's Babblin~
## 7 6_Hunter_2013.txt "A Mad Mad Mothers Mistake\n\nLeft left not right she's l~
## 8 7_Hunter_2010.txt "Thoughts In Madness, Madness In Thought\n\nMy days are m~
## 9 8_Hunter_2012.txt "Traces Of Madness (Madman's Song)\n\nYou would have said~
## 10 9_Hunter_2010.txt "If Mad Is A Hatter Then Mad Am I\n\nIf mad is a hatter t~
## 11 1_Victorian_1850.~ "THE BALLAD OF RICHARD BURNELL.\n\nFrom his bed rose Rich~
## 12 10_Victorian_1820~ "The following touching Verses are taken from a Newcastle~
## 13 2_Victorian_1820.~ "THE BRANCHERS.*\n\n1.\nI sat to bask, one sunny morn,\n1~
## 14 3_Victorian_1890.~ "THE BALLAD OF THE KING’S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime flus~
## 15 4_Victorian_1850.~ "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell ! For the love of~
## 16 5_Victorian_1820.~ "STANZAS.\n\n“ —— And muttered, lost ! lost ! lost ~
## 17 6_Victorian_1860.~ "XV.—THE MOTHER’S LAMENT.\n\nWhen I was young, when I~
## 18 7_Victorian_1880.~ "A Stray Sunbeam.\n\nA\nSUNBEAM gone astray\n1\nUpon life~
## 19 8_Victorian_1870.~ "LADY NOEL BYRON.\n\nA\nND as she spoke, it seemed as tho~
## 20 9_Victorian_1840.~ "The Auld State Kirk.\nNEW SONG.\nTune—“ Auld Lang Sy~Clean data
library(tidyr)## Warning: package 'tidyr' was built under R version 4.0.3poems <- poems_raw %>%
separate(doc_id, c("ID","Database","Year"))## Warning: Expected 3 pieces. Additional pieces discarded in 20 rows [1, 2, 3, 4,
## 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20].poems## # A tibble: 20 x 4
## ID Database Year text
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 1 Hunter 2009 "It's A Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) , Mad(Off) Worl~
## 2 10 Hunter 2008 "Mad Mad World\n\nthe world is mad\ninsane!\nchristian~
## 3 2 Hunter 2014 "What Is This Mad Race Of The Mad-Mad Modern Man?\n\nW~
## 4 3 Hunter 2009 "It Is A Mad, Mad, Mad World.........\n\nMoon is gone\~
## 5 4 Hunter 2014 "Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Will Madden Me And You/ You P~
## 6 5 Hunter 2014 "The Poets Are The Mad Men And Poetry A Mad Man's Babb~
## 7 6 Hunter 2013 "A Mad Mad Mothers Mistake\n\nLeft left not right she'~
## 8 7 Hunter 2010 "Thoughts In Madness, Madness In Thought\n\nMy days ar~
## 9 8 Hunter 2012 "Traces Of Madness (Madman's Song)\n\nYou would have s~
## 10 9 Hunter 2010 "If Mad Is A Hatter Then Mad Am I\n\nIf mad is a hatte~
## 11 1 Victorian 1850 "THE BALLAD OF RICHARD BURNELL.\n\nFrom his bed rose R~
## 12 10 Victorian 1820 "The following touching Verses are taken from a Newcas~
## 13 2 Victorian 1820 "THE BRANCHERS.*\n\n1.\nI sat to bask, one sunny morn,~
## 14 3 Victorian 1890 "THE BALLAD OF THE KING’S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime f~
## 15 4 Victorian 1850 "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell ! For the love~
## 16 5 Victorian 1820 "STANZAS.\n\n“ —— And muttered, lost ! lost ! lo~
## 17 6 Victorian 1860 "XV.—THE MOTHER’S LAMENT.\n\nWhen I was young, whe~
## 18 7 Victorian 1880 "A Stray Sunbeam.\n\nA\nSUNBEAM gone astray\n1\nUpon l~
## 19 8 Victorian 1870 "LADY NOEL BYRON.\n\nA\nND as she spoke, it seemed as ~
## 20 9 Victorian 1840 "The Auld State Kirk.\nNEW SONG.\nTune—“ Auld Lang~Tokenize text data
library(tidytext)## Warning: package 'tidytext' was built under R version 4.0.4library(stringr)## Warning: package 'stringr' was built under R version 4.0.4poems_cleaned <- poems %>%
unnest_tokens(output = word, input = text) %>%
anti_join(stop_words) %>%
filter(!str_detect(word, "[^a-zA-Z\\s]|mad")) %>%
mutate(Database = str_replace(Database, "Hunter", "Contemporary"))
poems_cleaned## # A tibble: 3,552 x 4
## ID Database Year word
## <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
## 1 1 Contemporary 2009 world
## 2 1 Contemporary 2009 bernard
## 3 1 Contemporary 2009 investors
## 4 1 Contemporary 2009 banker
## 5 1 Contemporary 2009 globe
## 6 1 Contemporary 2009 money
## 7 1 Contemporary 2009 adolph
## 8 1 Contemporary 2009 hitler
## 9 1 Contemporary 2009 blamed
## 10 1 Contemporary 2009 jewish
## # ... with 3,542 more rowsVisualize most frequent words
library(ggplot2)## Warning: package 'ggplot2' was built under R version 4.0.4poems_cleaned %>%
count(Database, word, sort = TRUE) %>%
group_by(Database) %>%
top_n(10, n) %>%
ungroup() %>%
ggplot(aes(x = n, y = reorder_within(word, n, Database), fill = Database)) +
geom_col(alpha = 0.8) +
facet_wrap(~Database, scales = "free_y") +
scale_y_reordered() +
labs(y = NULL,
x = "Word Frequency",
title = "Top 10 Most Frequent Words")
Sentiment Analysis
Using NRC Lexicon
nrc <- get_sentiments("nrc")
nrc## # A tibble: 13,901 x 2
## word sentiment
## <chr> <chr>
## 1 abacus trust
## 2 abandon fear
## 3 abandon negative
## 4 abandon sadness
## 5 abandoned anger
## 6 abandoned fear
## 7 abandoned negative
## 8 abandoned sadness
## 9 abandonment anger
## 10 abandonment fear
## # ... with 13,891 more rowspoems_cleaned %>%
inner_join(nrc) %>%
count(Database, sentiment, sort = TRUE) %>%
ggplot(aes(y = reorder_within (sentiment, n, Database), x = n, fill = Database)) +
geom_col(alpha = 0.8) +
facet_wrap(~Database, scales = "free_y") +
scale_y_reordered() +
labs(title = "Number of Words Associated with Emotions", y = "Emotions", x = "Number of Words")
Using bing Lexicon
bing <- get_sentiments("bing")
bing## # A tibble: 6,786 x 2
## word sentiment
## <chr> <chr>
## 1 2-faces negative
## 2 abnormal negative
## 3 abolish negative
## 4 abominable negative
## 5 abominably negative
## 6 abominate negative
## 7 abomination negative
## 8 abort negative
## 9 aborted negative
## 10 aborts negative
## # ... with 6,776 more rowspoems_cleaned %>%
inner_join(bing) %>%
ggplot(aes(x = Database, fill = sentiment)) +
geom_bar(position = "fill") +
labs(title = "Ratios of Negative and Positive Words", y = "Proportions", x = NULL)
Usin AFINN Lexicon
affin <- get_sentiments("afinn")
affin## # A tibble: 2,477 x 2
## word value
## <chr> <dbl>
## 1 abandon -2
## 2 abandoned -2
## 3 abandons -2
## 4 abducted -2
## 5 abduction -2
## 6 abductions -2
## 7 abhor -3
## 8 abhorred -3
## 9 abhorrent -3
## 10 abhors -3
## # ... with 2,467 more rowspoems_cleaned %>%
inner_join(affin) %>%
group_by(Database) %>%
summarise(sentiment_score = sum(value)) %>%
ungroup() %>%
ggplot(aes(x = Database, y = sentiment_score)) +
geom_col(fill = "pink", alpha = 0.8) +
labs(title = "Sum of Sentiment Scores of Words", x = NULL, y = "Sum of Sentiment Scores")
Novels, music, poetry and other types of literature have been used for centuries as means to express thoughts and emotion, as well as used for entertainment. These different forms of literature tell stories but also depict many underlying themes and emotions, characterizing a variety of concepts sometimes as negative or positive. Mental illness is a theme seen throughout many generations in many types of literature. For example music has been a very popular way to express emotions, and in today’s songs on the radio mental illness and the idea of going insane is depicted in many love songs, and heartbreak songs. The variety within the depiction of mental illness is characterized by whether madness is used in sympathetic or unsympathetic ways. Often, mental illness has a negative connotation, but works of literature also are great ways to express mental illness as an empowering concept. More often than not, mental illness in works of literature are seen as threatening rather than empowering, yet empowerment is still a characteristic of madness in some works of literature.
Isolation is a common characteristic seen that is used to express madness in literature. In music for example, the song Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers emphasizes this feeling of isolation when singing about madness. In the lyrics the line “Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in, the city of angels lonely as I am, together we cry” (Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1991) is a clear example of how madness is associated with isolation. However, in this song the music is fairly slow and soft, this gives the listener the idea that everything is calm, and that feeling is reassuring. This is a good example of how mental illness is not only depicted by the words used in lyrics and literature, but also based on how the listener and/or reader interprets what they are hearing and reading. Mental illness is sometimes characterized as empowering, for example the song The Monsters by Eminem featuring Rhiana, madness begins to be seen as a somewhat good thing. The line sung by Rhiana, “I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed, get along with the voices inside of my head” (Eminem, 2013) can be seen as a positive connotation of madness, where these intrusive thoughts are seen as her “friends” and that she gets along well with the voices in her head. These lyrics are romanticized although, as the song continues Eminem raps the lyrics “ I’m beginning to lose sleep, one sheep, two sheep going coo-coo and kooky as Kool Keith, but I’m actually weirder than you think” (Eminem, 2013). He raps about how he is losing sleep and feeling like he is getting more and more insane. This quote shows how madness is not a beautiful thing so much, and although it can be seen as an empowering concept periodically, it is definitely characterised as threatening in this song, and in many others.
Isolation is another theme used to describe mental illness in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Stetson. The woman in this short story, Jane, is suffering from a mental illness, and has a manipulative husband John. Her husband clearly doesn’t want her getting better, and John was possibly manipulating her into believing that she was mentally ill. He had complete control over her, and forced her to stay in a room for days doing absolutely nothing but staring at the yellow walls (Stetson, 1892). This is where loneliness plays a huge part in mental illness, and how isolation is clearly a characteristic of mental illness. Depending on how the reader interprets this short story, the mental illness highlighted in this short story is seen as a threat rather than empowering. She was forced to isolate, forced to feel her emotions by herself alone with no distractions, in no way does this empower mental illness.
Lastly another example of mental illness being depicted as threatening is in the short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”. There are many many depictions throughout this story that gives the idea to the reader that mental illness is not only threatening, but a dangerous and scary concept. This short story depicts madness and people with mental illness as detached from reality and dull. Throughout this story the narrator attempts to discredit his own sanity and prove why the murder he commits was infact a sane action. He would secretly observe the man he murdered for many nights and watch and listen to him sleep, behaving as if this was normal. The narrator insists he’s not crazy, and that his actions were justifiable, and says that is simply just nervous. He says “nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Giordano, 2020) and tries to justify his sanity with him being simply just nervous. This story is an extremely threatening depiction of mental illness, while the narrator spends the whole story trying to prove he is sane, he does the exact opposite and proves to the reader that he is in fact insane. This is a threatening depiction because the narrator is creepy stalking murder, and is clearly mad.
In data collected from ten poems from two different eras there are correlations between positive and negative emotions and words used to describe mental illness. The limitations of this data are that only ten poems were choses from each era, contemporary and victorian. When collecting these poems, there were not enough titles with the word “mad” in the title, so poems with the word “mad” in the body of the poem were collected as well, causing more potential limitations. All ten contemporary poems had “mad” in the title, but a few of the Victorian poems had mad in the body of the text. From this data it is concluded that poetry more often than not depicts mental illness as negative rather than positive, and that is in both victorian and contemporary eras of time. In victorian it was concluded that about 60% of poetry depicts madness in a negative light and 40% in a positive. In the contemporary ear it is concluded that about 75% of poems depict madness negatively and only 25% positively. When comparing victorian era and contemporary era it is evident that victorian poetry consists of more empowerment with mental illness, as words like “positive, trust, and joy” are some of the most common words used. Compared to contemporary where words like “negative” and “fear” are some of the most commonly used words.
From song lyrics, short stories, and poems from both contemporary and victorian eras, it is concluded that mental illness in literature is seen as more of a threatening concept rather than an empowering one. It is evident that in some works of literature madness can be shown in a positive light and seen as empowering, but for the most part it is clear that madness is seen as a threat in these cultural products, dating back from the Victorian era all the way to now.
Works Cited:
“Eminem (Ft. Rihanna) – The Monster.” Genius. 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2021.
Giordano, Robert. “The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.” PoeStories.com. Web. 30 Apr. 2021.
“Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge.” Genius. 24 Sept. 1991. Web. 30 Apr. 2021.
Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow WallPaper.” 1892. Web.