It is better to ask two questions: 1. Why is the mainstream of China culture poetry?
2. Why was drama the mainstream of literature before the Western Renaissance, and then novels the mainstream of literature?
China is just a country, and the word "West" has included many countries. They are concepts of subordination and subordination. Even if there are differences in the mainstream literature, we can't compare them, because "the West" contains much more things than "China". It should be noted that the West you are talking about is actually limited to Europe, because the literary power of Europe was indeed much stronger than that of other western places hundreds of years ago, so now the narrow sense of Western literature refers to European literature.
Now that the above questions are clear, I can answer these two questions one by one.
1: Practicality is a very important feature of China feudal culture. Confucius once said, "Learning to be excellent is to be an official." This means that once your knowledge reaches a certain level, you should go out to be an official-learning knowledge means going out to be an official and transforming society. This feature can also be used to explain why poetry has been circulating in Chinese civilization for thousands of years. China ancient literary theorist said in Shangshu: "Poetry expresses ambition", that is to say, poetry is to express what one thinks; Han Yu once said, "If there is injustice, there will be noise." Why should a person write a poem is because he has grievances in his heart and wants to talk about them. In this way, poetry has become a good medium for ancient poets to express their feelings. In addition, starting from the four-character poems in The Book of Songs, seven-character poems gradually appeared, and poems gradually formed their inherent rhythm and format from loose forms, which fully satisfied the psychology of elegant people in pursuing beauty. Therefore, poetry can run through the whole ancient history of China. Although it may be replaced by words and songs of different times, it has never been forgotten.
Answer the second question, and I will say that you are wrong again. Did someone really say that "the mainstream of literature before the Renaissance in the West was drama, and the mainstream of literature after that was fiction"? We can't say that Aeschylus appeared before the Renaissance, and Shakespeare's appearance during the Renaissance was the mainstream of literature at that time. The same is true of later novels. If you think so, you can only say that your reading is still too small. What a person likes will affect what he likes, and what a person likes will not pay attention to things outside his interest.
/kloc-how many poems have you read since the 0/7th century? Do you really know the drama of magical realism?
Therefore, the second question itself is a wrong thing. So what's wrong with it and what's wrong with you? In fact, this is also a wrong way to study western literature-cultural interpretation.
We are now used to a mouthful of words such as "realism", "modernism" and "postmodernism". Although this classification method can really summarize the characteristics or thinking tendency of a group of writers, to some extent, I think it hinders our understanding of a literary work. Literary text is an independent whole, which has nothing to do with the author. Once the author has finished writing, it is free. It just lies there, waiting for you to read. What you read is what it is. If you think it's a P, well, it's a P. When we read literary works, we should not read them with some fixed thinking. Before opening it, we should tell ourselves that I don't know anything, and I am waiting for the book in front of me to open a new world for me. I think this interpretation is correct, which is not only beneficial to our appreciation, but also beneficial to our own creation.
In addition, you can also talk casually about the style of "novel". Personally, I think novels are the freest of all styles. It doesn't need to define a certain format or emotion, and it won't be confined to a certain space by the stage ... and its fictional characteristics also ensure that writers can let their imagination run freely. I think this is also the reason why great western novels have emerged one after another since17th century, especially since19th century.
That's all.