HUMOR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL CRITIQUE AND INFORMAL LEARNING IN JEROME K. JEROME'S THREE MEN IN A BOAT
Abstract
Humor has long occupied an ambivalent position within literary scholarship, frequently dismissed as incompatible with serious intellectual or pedagogical purposes. Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (1889) exemplifies this critical neglect, having often been categorized as light entertainment rather than a text of cultural and educational significance. This study re-evaluates the novel by examining humor as a deliberate instrument of social critique and informal learning within the context of late Victorian society. The aim of the research is to demonstrate how Jerome employs comic strategies to expose middle-class anxieties, performative masculinity, and the illusion of cultural competence, while simultaneously encouraging reader reflection and moral awareness.
Using qualitative textual analysis grounded in humor theory (incongruity and superiority), socio-cultural criticism, and theories of informal learning, the study analyzes key narrative episodes to identify the pedagogical and critical functions of humor. The findings reveal that humor in Three Men in a Boat operates on multiple levels: it destabilizes claims to expertise and respectability, interrogates constructions of masculinity, and creates conditions for reflective learning through laughter rather than explicit moral instruction. The study contributes to literary and educational scholarship by positioning humor as a legitimate mode of cultural critique and by highlighting the educational potential of comic narrative. In doing so, it challenges traditional hierarchies that separate entertainment from instruction and reaffirms the relevance of Victorian comic fiction to contemporary discussions of learning, identity, and social behavior.
Keywords
humor theory, social critique, informal learning, Victorian literature, Jerome K. Jerome, masculinity, narrative pedagogy
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