Naïve Narrator – an Effective Means in Humour Creating

Jana Waldnerová, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia;        Abstract: The paper focuses on literary humour and one method of its creating, which is by incorporation of the naïvenarrator. The impact of such strategy is crucial as the narration can be easily shifted from a serious to light, even comical mood. In the beginning, the text introduces humour and the notion of the narrator with some contemporary theories of humour and historical approaches to the narrator, which leads to the definition of thenaïvenarrator. The aforementioned kind of narrator is represented by examples from the selected works of P. G. Wodehouse (Sam the Sudden, Leave it to Jeeves) and Winston Groom (Forrest Gump). The examples show two different kinds of the naïvenarrator and their ironical and satirical effects on the text. The mechanism of irony is explained as well.