Checking into some books about sources of poetry & criticism in ancient Greece. Andrew Ford, Origins of Criticism. In the intro he discusses the oral performance/communal culture out of which "professional" criticism evolved : song recitals were social gatherings, & criticism & comment were part of the occasion itself. Shows examples of this from Homer & early literature.

Aristotle was at the beginning of one era, but at the end of another, too. The archaic one shows some fleeting similarities with contemporary poetry culture (cd's, music, reading jaunts, tribes, etc.).

& perhaps Aristotle's structural analysis of mimetic, performative poetry reflects that earlier culture in a way which the (cf. R.S. Crane) Alexandrian, text-based, rhetorical mode of criticism does not.