Journey to the West
Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. In English-speaking countries, "Monkey", Arthur Waley's popular abridged translation is well known.
Journey to the West
"Journey to the West" was thought to have been written and published anonymously by Wu Cheng'en in the 16th century. Hu Shih, literary scholar and former Ambassador to the United States, wrote that the people of Wu's hometown attributed it early on to Wu, and kept records to that effect as early as 1625; thus, claimed Ambassador Hu, "Journey to the West" was one of the earliest Chinese novels for which the authorship is officially documented. Recent scholarship casts doubts on this attribution. Brown University Chinese literature scholar David Lattimore states: "The Ambassador's confidence was quite unjustified. What the gazetteer says is that Wu wrote something called "The Journey to the West." It mentions nothing about a novel. The work in question could have been any version of our story, or something else entirely."