Literary terms · AP English Literature, AP English Language, SAT Reading and Writing, ACT Reading
Volta
Also called: Turn
Volta: The turn in a poem, especially a sonnet, where the argument, mood or perspective shifts.
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What it means
Volta is Italian for turn. In a Petrarchan sonnet, the volta usually comes at the start of the sestet, after the first eight lines. In a Shakespearean sonnet, it often comes at the final couplet. Many other poems have turns as well, signaled by words such as but, yet or then, or by a stanza break.
The volta often holds the poem's central insight: the place where the speaker answers, complicates or reverses what came before.
Example
A sonnet spends eight lines describing a garden's decay in winter, then turns in line nine with 'And yet beneath the frost the bulbs keep count,' shifting from loss to hidden persistence.
On the exam
Locating and explaining the volta is one of the most dependable ways to build an interpretation of an unfamiliar poem.