The first author who explicitly put forward The Journey to the West was Wu Cheng'en's "Dangtui Wu Yujin". In the fourth volume of Yang Shan Shi Lu, he said: "Mr. Jiuzhilie from the Apocalypse (referring to Wu Cheng'en) is the head of the garden of modern literature. He is smart and has a wide range of knowledge and has written for poetry. After good banter, there are several miscellaneous notes, which are famous for a while. At first, I didn't know why I was waiting for a book. I was reading Huai Xian Wen Mu written by Mr. The Journey to the West. Later, Ruan Kuisheng's Tea Guest Talk also said: "Only Huaixian Wenmu contains the popular romance of Sheyang, which is called a book to prove the truth." ... if it is, it is undoubtedly written by the right person. In addition, The Journey to the West is regarded as the author of Wu Cheng'en in The Journey to the West, Chronicle of Baiting by Ding Yan and Notes of Yuewei Caotang by Ji Gou.
Others think that The Journey to the West was not written by Wu Cheng'en. For example, Mao Qiling identified The Journey to the West's author as Qiu Changchun (Qiu Chuji) in Yuan Dynasty according to Tao's "Record of Dropping out of Farming". Wang Peigou's "Records of Old News of Zhiyuan" also affirmed that this book was written by a real person in Changchun in early autumn. However, due to their insufficient arguments, it is difficult to draw a conclusion.
In 1930s, Lu Xun affirmed in A Brief History of Chinese Novels that The Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en. Almost at the same time, Hu Shi published a long article "Textual Research on Journey to the West" in the sixth issue of Reading magazine of 1923, pointing out that "the author of The Journey to the West now is a great writer who indulges in debauchery, rejuvenation and banter", and this great writer is Wu Cheng'en, and The Chronicle of Wu Cheng'en has been preliminarily drafted. Since then, this view of Lu Xun and Hu Shi has been recognized by most people in China academic circles.
However, scholars did not stop there. In the fourth issue of Social Science Front 1983, Mr. Zhang published the article "Is Journey to the West Written by Wu Cheng'en?", pointing out that the most important basis for claiming that The Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en is the Legacy and Ruan Kuisheng's Passing Tea, and the key to Wu's and Ruan's argument is the Apocalypse Huai 'an. In Huaixian Wenmu, we only saw Wu Cheng'en: Sheyang Collection with four volumes. Preface to Chunqiu Zhuan; According to The Journey to the West's records, it only points out that Wu Cheng'en wrote The Journey to the West, but it doesn't say what kind of book this The Journey to the West belongs to, and it's hard to know its exact volume or age. On the contrary, in the geography category of the Eight Histories Department of Ganqingtang Bibliography written by Huang Yuxi in the early Qing Dynasty, it is recorded that "Wu Cheng'en and The Journey to the West are travel notes, not popular novels." This increases the complexity of the problem, so who is the author of Journey to the West?