《西游记》是中国的一部长篇神话小说,在中国具有广泛而深刻的影响,男女老少人皆知之。此书的作者是吴承恩,他大约生于16世纪初年,卒于16世纪80年代。在吴承恩写成《西游记》之前,关于唐僧去西天取经的故事早已在民间广泛流传并出现了若干文学作品。例如,宋代有话本《大唐三藏取经诗话》,元代有吴昌龄的杂剧《唐三藏西天取经》,明初有杨景 Journey to the West is a long mythical novel in China, with extensive and profound influence in China, which is well known to all ages. Written by Wu Cheng-en, the book was born about the early 16th century and died in the 1680s. Before Wu Cheng’en wrote “Journey to the West”, the story about the monk going to the West has long been widely circulated among the people and appeared in a number of literary works. For example, the Song dynasty has the present “Datang Sanzang learn the poem”, the Yuan Dynasty Wu Changling’s drama “Tang three Tibet learning”, early Ming Yang