Grace Sweeney | 2026 I.S. Symposium
Name: Grace Sweeney
Title: Sentiments of Satire: Sentiment Analysis on Book I of Juvenal’s Satires
Majors: Statistical and Data Sciences; Classical Studies
Advisors: Cynthia Lester; Josephine Shaya
Juvenal鈥檚 Satires critique Roman moral and societal failings with an absurdity meant to entertain the audience. His writing style is characterized by its angry, vitriolic nature. I perform sentiment analysis on my own translation of Satire I, II, IV, and V using a lexicon-based approach to determine if the sentiment of Juvenal鈥檚 vocabulary more closely aligns with the negative themes of the Satires or the positive effect they were meant to have on their audience. The results of the analysis show that Juvenal used a largely positive vocabulary to express his negative themes. His use of sentiment changes based on the persona he is writing with, playing on greater satiric themes. Sentiment analysis on classical works offers the opportunity to analyze ancient texts through new perspectives that show deep literary nuance.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
