man's nature is also social and inquisitive, which in turn implies that what we know or can find out about human social behavior is important to understanding the social structures in which behavior takes place. To put it another way, the art of a culture can have the effect of explaining the content and priorities of that culture; that is why it seems rather crucial to take note, as Aristotle does, of the social and religious context of the emergence of tragedy in Greek culture and the importance of tragic art as an aspect of that culture.
Subsequent generations of Western drama and criticism can be interpreted as strategies for explaining or commenting on culture as both content and as context of immediate human experience. There are also strong continuities of thought across generations, such that, in each succeeding age, current drama and commentary can be seen as relevant to--even when departing from--axiological origins. Consider the quarrel of The Cid, which entails Poetics footnotes but highlights in ways unique to the neoclassical period the in
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