Naivety

Naivety (also spelled naïvety or naïveté) is the state of being naïve, that is to say, having or showing a lack of experience, or understanding sophistication, often in a context where one neglects pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. One who is "naïve" may be called a naïf.

"Naive" redirects here. For other uses, see Naive (disambiguation).

Etymology

In early use, the word naïve meant "natural or innocent", and did not connote ineptitude. As a French adjective, it is spelled naïve or naïf. French adjectives have grammatical gender; naïf is used with masculine nouns and naïve with feminine nouns. The French noun is naïveté.

The dots above the i are a diaeresis (see also Ï). As an unitalicized English word, "naive" is now the more usual spelling,[1] although "naïve" is also used; "naïf" often represents the French masculine, but has a secondary meaning as an artistic style. “Naïve” is pronounced as two syllables, with the stress on the second one, in the French manner.

Culture

The naïf appears as a cultural type in two main forms. On the one hand, there is 'the satirical naïf, such as Candide'.[2] Northrop Frye suggested we might call it "the ingénu form, after Voltaire's dialogue of that name. "Here an outsider... grants none of the premises which make the absurdities of society look logical to those accustomed to them",[3] and serves essentially as a prism to carry the satirical message. Baudrillard indeed, drawing on his Situationist roots, sought to position himself as ingénu in everyday life: "I play the role of the Danube peasant: someone who knows nothing but suspects something is wrong... I like being in the position of the primitive... playing naïve".[4]

On the other hand, there is the artistic "naïf - all responsiveness and seeming availability".[5] Here 'the naïf offers himself as being in process of formation, in search of values and models...always about to adopt some traditional "mature" temperament'[6] - in a perpetual adolescent moratorium. Such instances of "the naïf as a cultural image... offered themselves as essentially responsive to others and open to every invitation... established their identity in indeterminacy".[7]

During the 1960s, "the naïfs turned toward mysticism and Eastern religions",[8] feeding into the hippie movement. "Hippie culture, bastard of the beat generation out of pop, was much like a folk culture - oral, naive, communal, its aphorisms ("Make love, not war", "turn on, tune in, drop out") intuited, not rationalized".[9]

See also

Notes and references
  1. Oxford English Dictionary, "naïve" and "naïf" and quotes.
  2. Mark Perrino, The Poetics of Mockery (1995), p. 54.
  3. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton 1973) p. 232.
  4. Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art (2005), p. 66-67.
  5. Martin Green, Children of the Sun (London 1977), p. 238.
  6. Green, p. 35.
  7. Green, p. 35.
  8. Leora Lev, Enter at Your Own Risk (2006), p. 50.
  9. Ellen Willis, "Dylan" in Craig McGregor ed., Bob Dylan: A Retrospective (1975), p. 148.
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