The Journey to the West is the first romantic novel in ancient China. The Journey to the West's earliest edition today is "A New Carved Big Seal, Like an Official Plate, Journey to the West" written by Jinling Shidetang in the 20th year of Wanli in Ming Dynasty, with no author's name. Lu Xun, Dong Zuobin and others finally determined Wu Cheng'en's original work according to the records of Huai 'an Fu Zhi and Wu Cheng'en Journey to the West.
works
The Journey to the West is a classic of China's ghost novels, reaching the peak of ancient romance novels, and is called the four classical novels of China together with The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin and A Dream of Red Mansions. Since The Journey to the West came out, it has been widely circulated among the people, and various versions have emerged one after another.
There were six editions in Ming Dynasty, seven editions and manuscripts in Qing Dynasty, and thirteen lost articles recorded in ancient books. After the Opium War, a large number of China's classical literary works were translated into western languages, and The Journey to the West was gradually introduced into Europe and America, and was translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, sign language, Swahili, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Polish, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.
Story source
The Journey to the West's book, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, has experienced a long-term accumulation and evolution process. However, it does not conform to the evolution characteristics of the first two: Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin are both fictions based on historical truth, which are combined with reality and reality, and finally presented to readers with false real images; The evolution of Journey to the West is to constantly deify and unreal the real events in history, and finally present them to readers in the form of "fantasy".
Xuanzang (602-664) learned the scriptures, which was originally a real historical event in the Tang Dynasty. In the third year of Zhenguan (629), in order to pursue the true meaning of Buddhism, I set out from Chang 'an, passed through more than 100 countries, and finally arrived in India after difficulties and obstacles. He studied there for more than two years and gave a speech at a large-scale debate on Buddhist classics, which was well received.