Culture

library(readtext)

## Warning: package 'readtext' was built under R version 4.0.5

library(dplyr)
library(textdata)

## Warning: package 'textdata' was built under R version 4.0.5

poems_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 KINGâ€™S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime flus~
##  5 4_Victorian_1850.~ "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell !â€ƒFor the love of~
##  6 5_Victorian_1820.~ "STANZAS.\n\nâ€œ â€”â€” And muttered, lost ! lost ! lost ~
##  7 6_Victorian_1860.~ "XV.â€”THE MOTHERâ€™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.\nTuneâ€”â€œ 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 KINGâ€™S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime flus~
## 15 4_Victorian_1850.~ "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell !â€ƒFor the love of~
## 16 5_Victorian_1820.~ "STANZAS.\n\nâ€œ â€”â€” And muttered, lost ! lost ! lost ~
## 17 6_Victorian_1860.~ "XV.â€”THE MOTHERâ€™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.\nTuneâ€”â€œ Auld Lang Sy~

Clean Data

library(tidyr)
poems <- 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 KINGâ€™S JEST.\n\nWhen springtime f~
## 15 4     Victorian 1850  "THE PENITENT FREE-TRADER.\n\nTufnell !â€ƒFor the love~
## 16 5     Victorian 1820  "STANZAS.\n\nâ€œ â€”â€” And muttered, lost ! lost ! lo~
## 17 6     Victorian 1860  "XV.â€”THE MOTHERâ€™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.\nTuneâ€”â€œ Auld Lang~

Tokenize Text Data

library(tidytext)
library(stringr)

poems_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 rows

Visualize most frequent words

library(ggplot2)

poems_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

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 rows

poems_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 = "Sentiments of Words", y = "Sentiments", x = "Sentiment Scores")

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 rows

poems_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)

afinn <- get_sentiments("afinn")
afinn

## # 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 rows

poems_cleaned %>%
  inner_join(afinn)%>%
  group_by(Database)%>%
  summarise(sentiment_score = sum(value)) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = Database, y = sentiment_score)) + 
  geom_col(fill = "midnightblue", alpha = 0.8) + 
  labs(title = "Sum of Sentiment Scores of Words", x = NULL, y = "Sum of Sentiment Scores")

Unit 4 Reaction

Cultural products can depict “madness” or other mental illnesses in a variety of ways. Illnesses often have a great influence on creators and artists when creating their work, often causing them to paint certain things, for example, or to explain a plot in a certain way, like in a poem. The finished product can sometimes reference their status at the time of its creation, as in some cases, artists will discuss their illness in a song and base its lyrics around it. Mental illnesses affect everyone on a different scale, meaning that its effect on people and their creations varies from person to person.

Edgar Allen Poe uses the idea of Madness in his poem, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In this poem, the narrator discusses how an old man’s eye has been bringing him distress, all while assuring the reader that he’s completely calm and relaxed. This poem depicts madness as an illness that causes mass delusion, and can lead to a breakdown of someone’s sanity, with an example of this being the narrator explaining that he had to resort to murdering the old man to remain calm.¹ Throughout the poem, the narrator appears to be contradicting himself, claiming that he is sane while explaining actions that would state the opposite, illustrating that illnesses can distort and affect one’s reasoning greatly.

Artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, have also been greatly affected by their illnesses.² Much of Van Gogh’s work are considered to be some of the greatest paintings of all time, however, during his lifetime, his art wasn’t widely known and received little fame.³ This, coupled with his mental state (Van Gogh was believed to have suffered from depression, along with other possible illnesses) led him to commit suicide, and wasn’t able to experience the success of his paintings. Van Gogh was able to create some of the most well known pieces of art, despite being held back by his mental state, suggesting that madness can be used as a “tool” by those affected, and causes people to express themselves in ways not normally considered.

The data suggests a similar reasoning to the examples explained earlier. In both the Contemporary and Victorian data graphs, negative and positive words and/or phrases are both used, with the Victorian graph displaying a more equal ratio than the Contemporary graph. This suggests that madness has varying degrees of affects on people, and is able to be explained or illustrated by these people in unique and differing ways. However, the data also illustrates that there may be a recent trend towards portraying madness in a negative (threatening) fashion, as opposed to it being shown positively (empowering). This is due to the change in the graph from the Victorian to the Contemporary era, as while the graphs are still somewhat equal, the Victorian graph one is far more than the Contemporary one.

Bibliography

Berman, Ben. “CUI Playlist: 10 Songs That Get Real about Mental Health.” RSS, June 1, 2020. https://www.cuindependent.com/2020/05/15/cui-playlist-10-songs-get-real-mental-health/.

“The Connection Between Mental Illness and Creativity - Google Arts & Culture.” Google. Google. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://artsandculture.google.com/usergallery/the-connection-between-mental-illness-and-creativity/xgLyEzX8LSiCJg.

Ferreira, ByRute. “Artists Who Suffered Mental Illness And How It Affected Their Art: DailyArt.” DailyArtMagazine.com - Art History Stories, October 13, 2020. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/artists-who-suffered-mental-illness/.

Giordano, Robert. “The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.” Accessed May 2, 2021. https://poestories.com/read/telltaleheart.

Nizamie, Shamsul Haque, and Sai Krishna Tikka. “Psychiatry and Music.” Indian journal of psychiatry. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd, April 2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040058/.

“Vincent Van Gogh.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., March 26, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vincent-van-Gogh.

Wolf, P. “Creativity and Chronic Disease. Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890).” The Western journal of medicine. Copyright 2001 BMJ Publishing Group, November 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071623/.