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Journey to the West
8.5Wu Cheng'en
China's most globally influential novel — Wu Cheng'en's sixteenth-century pilgrimage epic produced the Monkey King, whose adventures still shape East Asian popular culture from Dragon Ball to Hong Kong cinema.
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ISBN 9780226971315Summary & Critical Assessment (Score: 8.5/10)
Journey to the West is the most beloved and widely adapted of China's Four Great Classical Novels. Drawing on the historical pilgrimage of the seventh-century monk Xuanzang, Wu Cheng'en wove together Buddhist allegory, Daoist cosmology, folk myth, and slapstick comedy to produce a fantastical religious epic whose central character — the Monkey King, Sun Wukong — has become one of the most recognizable figures in world literature.
First printed in 1592 during the late Ming dynasty, the novel fictionalizes the journey Xuanzang actually made to India in 629–645 AD to collect Buddhist scriptures. Its blend of religious sincerity and irreverent comedy gave it broad popular appeal that has only grown across the centuries. Arthur Waley's 1942 abridgement Monkey introduced the work to the English-speaking world; Anthony C. Yu's complete four-volume scholarly translation, revised in 2012, remains the standard. The Monkey King now appears in everything from Hong Kong cinema and Japanese anime (Dragon Ball) to Netflix's American Born Chinese.
The Renaissance & Reformation, c. 1532-1580
Martin Luther's 95 Theses (1517) ignite the Protestant Reformation, permanently fracturing Western Christianity. His German Bible translation (NT 1522, complete 1534) democratizes scripture and establishes modern literary German. Luther relegates the Catholic deuterocanonical books to an appendix he calls 'Apocrypha,' establishing the 66-book Protestant canon. The Reformation triggers devastating religious wars across Europe, culminating in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which kills an estimated 8 million and devastates Central Europe. Meanwhile, Machiavelli separates politics from morality. Columbus has reached the Americas. The printing press transforms the spread of ideas. Copernicus publishes (1543). Montaigne invents the personal essay in France.
Awards & Adaptations
Countless adaptations: Chinese opera, the 1986 CCTV series, Stephen Chow films, Dragon Ball, American Born Chinese.
Recommended Edition
Anthony C. Yu, The Journey to the West, revised edition (University of Chicago Press, 4 vols, 2012); Arthur Waley abridged as Monkey (Penguin Classics, 1942)
