Alguns estudiosos já apontaram fórmulas nos resquícios da obra de Safo e Alceu. O estudo das expressões tradicionais em Homero deu origem, no século XX, às investigações oralistas da épica grega. Ao analisar as conjunções de nome e epíteto nas epopeias homéricas, Milman Parry viu na linguagem épica dicção tradicional e herdada, destinada a facilitar a composição dos cantos. Mais tarde, em contato com outras tradições poéticas, Parry sugeriu que esse caráter tradicional se devia à oralidade da poesia homérica. Seu discípulo Albert Lord e outros estudiosos expandiram suas conclusões, descrevendo o funcionamento das fórmulas e de outras unidades tradicionais, como temas narrativos e tipos de canção. Estudar semelhantes elementos na poesia lésbia é mais difícil, devido a seu estado fragmentário. No entanto, os poucos resquícios mostram consideráveis reiterações de fórmulas, temas e tipos de canto, o que, junto ao caráter herdado e especializado do dialeto, sugere uma dicção oral-tradicional lésbia independente. Ao mesmo tempo, os poetas eólicos partilham as mesmas unidades com outros poetas arcaicos (jônicos ou dóricos), o que aponta para a existência de linguagem poética tradicional pan-helênica, apesar das diferenças genéricas e regionais. Essa semelhança permite que se comparem o emprego de elementos tradicionais ao longo de toda produção arcaica (e mesmo clássica). Por muito tempo, a dicção tradicional da epopeia foi encarada principalmente do ponto de vista da composição, mas sobretudo as investigações de John Miles Foley mostraram que ela também é um recurso de significação, que condicionava a recepção das canções pela audiência (tão fluente nessa linguagem especializada quanto o poeta). Foley nomeia o fenômeno referencialidade tradicional. Também se pode identificar semelhante referencialidade tradicional na poesia lésbia. Quatro fragmentos de Safo (frr. 1, 16, 31 e o Poema dos Irmãos) prestam-se à investigação, por sua extensão. Compostos no mesmo metro (a estrofe sáfica), também permitem observar a relação entre tradição, significação e versificação na canção eólica. Os fragmentos acabam por demonstrar vários paralelos formulares e temáticos, tanto com composições lésbias como com a mélica em geral, a elegia, o iambo e a epopeia. As proximidades sugerem que também a referencialidade tradicional é pan-helênica e, por outro lado, que a abordagem comparativa, sob esse viés teórico, é útil para elucidação da composição e do sentido dos cantos. Também se mostrou que a métrica parece importante elemento de significação tradicional, havendo estreita relação entre as expectativas métricas e a estrutura dos fragmentos. / Some scholars have identified formulae in the poetic remains of Sappho and Alcaeus. In the 20th Century, the study of traditional expressions in Homer originated the oralist approach to Greek epic. Analysing noun-epithet clusters in the Homeric poems, Milman Parry characterized epic language as traditional, inherited diction, which enabled composition. Later, studying other traditional poetries, Parry linked the traditonal character of epic diction to its oral nature. His disciple Albert Lord and other scholars built on his conclusions, describing how formulae and other traditional unities (such as narrative themes and song patterns) work. Analysing similar elements in Lesbian is conditioned by its fragmentary state. However, the few remains contain several repeated formulae, themes and song patterns. Like the inherited and specialized dialect, this repetition suggests an autonomous oral-traditional Lesbian diction. At the same time, Aeolic poets share the same traditional units as other archaic poets (Ionian or Dorian). This points to the existence of a Panhellenic poetic language, despite generic and regional differences. These similarities allow comparing traditional elements throughout the whole surviving archaic (and even classic) output. For a long time, traditional diction was considered to be a means of composition. Nonetheless, mainly John Miles Foley\'s studies have shown that it is also a way of meaning, which frames the audience\'s reception (who were as fluent in this specialized language as the singer). Foley names this phenomenon traditional referentiality. One could also ask whether this expedient is to be found in Lesbian poetry. Given their extent, four fragments of Sappho (frr. 1, 16, 31 and \"The Brothers\' Poem\") are useful to this investigation. Composed in the same metre (the Sapphic stanza), they also provide a case for the study of the interaction of tradition, meaning and versifying in Aeolic song. The poems have numerous formulaic and thematic parallels to both Lesbian compostions and general Greek lyric, elegiac, iambic and epic poetry. Traditional referentiality seems to be Pan- Hellenic and comparative approaches under this theoretical point of view appear to be useful to explain the songs\' composition and meaning. It has also been shown that metre seems to be an important element in Aeolic traditional meaning production. There is a close relationship between metrical expectations and the fragments\' structure.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.

From the eighth to the fourteenth century, places of wonder and dread appear in a wide variety of genres in Old and Middle English: epics, lays, romances, saints’ lives, travel narratives, marvel collections, visions of the afterlife. These places appear in narratives of the other world, a term which in Old and Middle English texts refers to the Christian afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, even Paradise can be fraught with wonder, danger, and the possibility of harm. But in addition to the other world, there are places that are not theologically separate from the human world, but that are nevertheless both marvellous and horrifying: the monster-mere in Beowulf, the Faerie kingdom of Sir Orfeo, the demon-ridden Vale Perilous in Mandeville’s Travels, or the fearful landscape of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Fraught with horror or the possibility of harm, these places are profoundly different from the presented or implied home world of the text. My dissertation investigates how Old and Middle English narratives create places of wonder and dread; how they situate these places metaphysically between the world of living mortals and the world of the afterlife; how they furnish these places with dangerous topography and monstrous inhabitants, as well as with motifs, with tropes, and with thematic concerns that signal their marvellous and fearful nature. I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts. This overarching concern with displacement encourages the migration of iconographic motifs, tropes, and themes across genre boundaries and theological categories.