Stella Brewer Brookes's study of the life and work of Joel Chandler Harris was published in 1950. Brookes examines how Harris drew on his extensive knowledge of African American folklore and culture to create the characters in his work. Brookes classifies the Uncle Remus books under seven major categories: trickster tales, other "creeturs," myths, supernatural tales, proverbs, dialect, and songs.
Uncle Remus Stories (1906) by Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), with illustratrions. Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from Southern United States African-Americans. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's Fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine. Uncle Remus is a kindly old former slave who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him. Br'er Rabbit ("Brother Rabbit") is the main character of the stories, a likable character, prone to tricks and trouble-making who is often opposed by Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. In one tale, Br'er Fox constructs a lump of tar and puts clothing on it. When Br'er Rabbit comes along he addresses the "tar baby" amiably, but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as Tar Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and becomes stuck.
I am advised by my publishers that this book is to be included in their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly warning gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it may be in effect, its intention is perfectly serious; and, even if it were otherwise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly in dialect must have its solemn, not to say melancholy, features. With respect to the Folk-Lore series, my purpose has been to preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently to the quaint dialect-if, indeed, it can be called a dialect-through the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history of every Southern family; and I have endeavored to give to the whole a genuine flavor of the old plantation...
This biography and critical study reconstructs Harris's life and career from his humble origins as an illegitimate child and plantation-newspaper printer's devil through his years in Macon, Forsyth, Savannah, and Atlanta. When Harris died in 1908, his national and international popularity rivaled his friend Mark Twain's. A psychologically complex person, Harris became an accomplished Southern local colorist who left multiple legacies as an American humorist, folklorist, New South journalist, children's writer, and author. He helped make the Old South New. Harris's Uncle Remus trickster tales derive primarily from transplanted Senegambian African folklore and are rhetorically and sociologically complex representations of the often predatory world of Old South slave life--where survival depends on trickery, wit, and will pitted against the brute strength of overseers and masters. Controversial today because he was a white man retelling black folk narratives, Harris nevertheless helped preserve the trickster tale-cycle and promote black folk-tale collecting, generally; hundreds of scholars and linguists have studied his works. Harris also made Brer Rabbit, the tar baby, and the briar patch popular-culture icons, and his highly believable animal characters and dialogues influenced the techniques of Rudyard Kipling, A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, E. B. White, and other children's authors. Finally, Harris's poor white and African American characters and narratives have left their mark on writers from his time to our times--from Twain to Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison.
