Psychological Mechanisms of Humour in the Novels of P. G. Wodehouse

The main purpose of this work is to provide an analysis of the comic style of the Anglo-American humorist P. G. Wodehouse. The analysis we provide aims to represent a contribution to the corpus of works which have allotted much space to the discussion of the stylistic features of Wodehouse`s writing. If such works have focused pre-eminently on the narrative techniques and the linguistic characteristics of the comic stylistic devices used by Wodehouse, the present study is conceived with a view to identifying and analysing the philosophical, psychological and linguistic substratum underlying Wodehouse`s humour. This work also includes a chapter devoted to the analysis of the Romanian translation of several instances of Wodehousian humour. The main goal of this analysis is to reveal the humour mechanisms that may lead to the untranslatability of humour and to its being lost or destroyed during the translation process. However, we also point out that this apparent untranslatability is not insurmountable, and humour can actually travel safely around the world.