In his Poetics, Aristotle argues contrary to current western thought that art, specifically the spoken variety developed out of the human need to imitate others. This is in direct contradiction to the widely espoused view that art fulfills a human to express individual thoughts and feels, to express something that only the particular artist is capable of expressing. I think perhaps both viewpoints hold some merit.
On one hand, all people imitate one another outside the confines of art. Whether it's quoting someone in a conversation, or mocking an outsider, people practice acting constantly. Language would be impossible to transmit if babies weren't prewired to imitate their mothers.
On the other hand, Aristotle was familiar with a particular type of drama in which the stories told were usually old legends, not something of the authors creation. This is in fact true of most non-western types of theater. It makes sense that that this could have come about as a more formal way of telling stories that could not be easily repeated during conversation. But modern drama places much more emphasis on breaking this mold, on breaking long standing rules of form and dialogue.
However, one could just as easily argue that writers have to consciously try to break convention because they naturally want to imitate...
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