Wu Cheng'en (, c. 1500 – 1582 or 1505–1580), courtesy name Ruzhong (), was a Chinese novelist, poet, and politician during the Ming dynasty. He is considered by many to be the author of Journey to the West, one of the Classic Chinese Novels.
Biography
Wu was born in Lianshui, Jiangsu province, and later moved to Huai'an. Wu's father, Wu Rui, had a good primary education and "shown an aptitude for study", The Dictionary of Ming Biography comments that "the identity of the author of the novel is thus still open to question," and that Wu "probably would have remained in oblivion had it not been for this probably erroneous ascription."
Brown University China literature scholar David Lattimore said: "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." Translator W. J. F. Jenner points out that although Wu had knowledge of Chinese bureaucracy and politics, the novel itself doesn't include any political details that "a fairly well-read commoner could not have known." Furthermore, it is unknown how much of the novel was created, and how much was simply compiled and edited, since much of the legend behind Journey to the West already existed in folk tales.
Other works
In addition to Journey to the West, Wu wrote numerous poems and stories (including the novel A Record of the Tripods of Emperor Yu 禹鼎记, which includes a preface by Wu), although most have been lost. Some of his work survives because, after his death, a family member gathered as many manuscripts as he could find and compiled them into four volumes, entitled Remaining Manuscripts of Mr. Sheyang 射阳先生存稿. although even the poems that he published with his name attached still were not quite modeled on the classical styles (although they were not as "vulgar" as Journey to the West).