Volta | Literary Term | English Literature | Major English | Plus Two Level
A
turn of thought or argument in poetry is called the volta. It is a
rhetorical shift. In some ways, it is a dramatic change in emotions or thoughts
that the poet is expressing in the poem. A volta is a turning point
that occurs at the end of an octave and marks the change of feeling or thought
between the octave and the sestet. There are two major types of volta. The
first is the Petrarchan volta that occurs in Petrarchan sonnets. The Italian
poet Petrarch has used this type of volta in his sonnets. As a poet projects
the subject of the sonnet in the first quatrain, he
makes it complicated in the second and completes it at the start of the second
part of the sonnet. It is here that the turn or volta is inserted to resolve
that problem. The second major type is used by Shakespeare and is called the
Shakespearean volta. It happens by the third quatrain and gives a concise
judgment or terseness of the issue discussed in the poem.
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