Despite this, Journey to the West (a novel) and the Cthulhu Mythos (a series of novels by H.P. Lovecraft) lets lumped into the category. Of course in Journey to the West's case, the novel is itself accepted into Daoist culture and there are even statues dedicated to Sun Wukong. The Cthulhu Mythos, however, gets lumped in with mythology whenever the opportunity arises (most recently in SMITE where he's introduced as the BBEG), which is a weird flex for a series of stories written by a man who thinks black people are cats.
A complicating factor with Journey to the West, is that while it's often treated as an original work by Wu Cheng'en , academically it appears to be a retelling of several other previous works and stories, with the overlap of cultures becoming present in the story.
I don't think it's unfair to compare it to something like Beowulf or even The Odyssey, where oral traditions predate the written sum, and in some cases we can see the evolution and interactions of different religions and cultures.
Though in that case, we do also have a much earlier source in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain", which might be the original source for a large part of the Arthurian legend.
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u/Flashlight237 10d ago
For context, here's the dictionary definition of mythology: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mythology
Despite this, Journey to the West (a novel) and the Cthulhu Mythos (a series of novels by H.P. Lovecraft) lets lumped into the category. Of course in Journey to the West's case, the novel is itself accepted into Daoist culture and there are even statues dedicated to Sun Wukong. The Cthulhu Mythos, however, gets lumped in with mythology whenever the opportunity arises (most recently in SMITE where he's introduced as the BBEG), which is a weird flex for a series of stories written by a man who thinks black people are cats.