When was Odyssey to the West published?
Journey to the West
The literary scholar Andrew H. Plaks points out that Waley's abridgement reflected his interpretation of the novel. This "brilliant translation... through its selection of episodes gave rise to the misleading impression that that this is essentially a compendium of popular materials marked by folk wit and humor." Waley consciously followed Hu Shih's lead, as shown in Hu's introduction to the 1943 edition. Hu scorned the allegorical interpretations of the novel as old-fashioned and instead insisted that the stories were simply comic. Hu Shih's interpretation reflected the popular reading of the novel, but does not account for the levels of meaning and the allegorical framework which scholars in China and the west have shown to be an important part of the late Ming text.[16]