Literary notes about ingenuous (AI summary)
In literature, the term "ingenuous" is often used to evoke a sense of unguarded honesty and youthful simplicity, capturing both sincere candor and an almost artless openness in character. Writers such as Hawthorne in [1] and Dickens in [2, 3] employ the word to highlight characters whose straightforwardness can be both endearing and revealing of deeper social or moral conditions. It frequently contrasts with calculated guile, suggesting instead a natural, sometimes naive, disposition that underlines a character’s inner purity—a theme also noted in passages like those by Thackeray [4] and Nietzsche [5]. This rich layering of meaning shows how "ingenuous" continues to provide a nuanced description of behavior that is at once candid and disarmingly sincere.