I was having an exchange with Mrs Bear in which I claimed that commonplace scrutiny and/or analysis has only now, in the last 100 years, made its biggest leaps/advances; that while we as a species have been telling stories for thousands of years that the landscape has only seen a few spikes in hard theory and that only now with new mediums for story like film and seminal works like Man of a Thousand Faces are we overall really getting into the nuts and bolts of the matter.

She calls me out on that, suggesting that it is only in the last 100 years have we had any kind of hard record of such analysis and that we have understood story as long as we have been telling it.

I think this is worth discussing or at least wanking about, so what say you, community?

I think both points are really interesting to consider, and I wouldn't know which was correct. I found myself in agreement with you while reading the post, then felt deflated by my gut instinct upon reading her response.

I think the point goes to Mrs. Bear.

Aristotle, Poetics.

Also, Rhetoric.

On Wikipedia.

A couple things have made literary analysis and criticism more commonplace.

1. The printing press
2. Increased rates of literacy in the general popular
3. Higher standards of living/new inventions that give more people time to enjoy leisure activities such as reading.

But no, literary criticism has been around forever.

Also, I don't see film as a new art form. It's theater delivered with new technology. Dramas, tragedies and comedies have been around for thousands of years. They follow a well established structure that has been analyzed since their origin.

I'll disagree with you on this one. There are similarities, but the two mediums are so drastically different in execution that I can't call them the same. It's like comparing fiction and poetry - similar, but very different.

I think a better example would be comparing non-fiction and journalism, which provide similar subject matter through different mediums.

I see your point Brand, but I disagree as well. You can't really do a nature documentary as a stage production.

The differences aren't even quite so far as that. If you think of a movie, you can have a large cast of characters, as many different scenes and settings as you want, and even the style of acting is completely different. On stage, you're looking at very few sets (many plays take advantage of a single set, though others have multiple). You're also limited in the number of characters you can have. Everything from makeup to lighting to stage design to sound to the acting is different.

Very early movies were sometimes plays on a stage where you could actually see the Proscenium at times. At that point, the techniques for using the camera, let alone acting for one, were not well developed.

Acting for each are pretty massively different. For one, films tend to only get things done in very very short increments and out of order. I've done of theatre and a bit of film-work. Hugely different beasts.

if movies were just advanced plays, then why do we still have plays. i know Broadway is for musicals mostly but there are still plays with a budget the same size as a movie would have, so the styles are different the connection with the audience is different also. and to say anything prior to the last 100yrs doesn't matter, or doesn't matter as much, is preposterous.
despite your scientific beliefs evolution happens in all forms of life from art to technology to parenting to writing. everything builds on what was available before itself and and changes in a way that is more appealing to those consuming it. those books or films that sell more with a certain type of character or genre are more present until the public decides we had enough of that and moves onto the next big thing (i for one cannot wait until the urban-fantasy-sex genre moves out of the spotlight).
maybe i missed the point and maybe i felt to strongly about this but i felt like it needed saying.