A Probe into“xieju” and the Author of A Journey to the West

The copyright ofA Journey to the West has been a long history. One of the crucial controversial parts lies in whether we can owe the author of this classical work to WU Cheng’en with the traditional judgment“the writing mirroring its author”. Since the time when Officially-compiled Tianqi Huai-an Chronicle put forward the view that WU Cheng’en was ad- ept in“xieju”, the scholars have put forward many views around this“xieju”, among which“xieju” was“comedy” and has been prevalent. However, due to the lack of comedy theories in Ming and Qing Dynasties and complexity of the relevant mod- ern theories, such view classifying the xieju as comedy has yet to be consulted. According to some literature, understanding this“xieju” as WU’s temper may be more reasonable.