Sentiment analysis of the volta in Shakespeare’s sonnets

Abstract This article examines William Shakespeare’s sonnet form by using both qualitative and quantitative methods, particularly with the aid of digital technologies such as sentiment analysis. It focuses on the volta, or “turn,” in Shakespeare’s sonnets, exploring its place, degree, and characteristics in a more methodologically enriching manner than extant criticisms do. While most critics have analyzed the volta through a qualitative approach (i.e. a close reading of poems), I consider the volta as a statistical problem of identifying a turning point in a sequence of fourteen values—in this case, sentiment scores assigned to each line in a sonnet. Furthermore, this study enhances the results of quantitative and computational analysis with a qualitative analysis of the sonnets’ structure and emotions, incorporating the human-in-the-loop approach. By integrating digital methods with close reading practices, this article both confirms and complicates a standard view that the volta in Shakespeare’s sonnets tends to occur before the final couplet. In addition, this study offers new insights into the function of the Shakespearean volta, expanding the focus of formalist inquiry from where it occurs to how it works: the volta induces not so much a line-to-line transition as a section-to-section transition.