Uncle Remus

Description

Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris, is a collection of Afro-American folk tales narrated by the title character. The tales of Uncle Remus resemble La Fontaine’s tales and Aesop’s Fables in many respects – the old man sits on his porch and tells stories about animals and people, sings songs and each one of his narrations comes with wisdom at the end, making them entertaining and educative at the same time.

Uncle Remus is a former slave and the language he uses when telling his stories is the Southern Georgia dialect used by slaves at the end of the 19th century. Many of the tales feature Br’er Rabbit (Br’er probably stands for Brother), a stereotypical trickster figure whose origins go back to the story telling traditions of Africa. Other animals characters in the book include Br’er Fox, Rabbit’s archetypal enemy, Br’er Wolf, another enemy of the witty trickster, Tarrypin, the Rabbit’s friend and partner in mischief, and Br’er Bar, the strongest of all animals. Human characters include Aunt Tempy, a housekeeper who accompanies the boy Uncle Remus is telling his stories to, Mister Man, an enemy of all animals, and Tildy, the maid who is hated in the beginning, but later on gets to tell stories of her own and many others. The stories told are all funny and entertaining and didactic. There is lots of humor in the accounts of Rabbit’s tricks, but there is always a moral at the end, and the stories can be interpreted at many different levels, giving readers a lot to think about.

Uncle Remus was first published in the form of a book in 1881 and has been adapted to comic and film many times since then. The stories were published in a comic series that ran for almost 30 years, between 1945 and 1972, and have been adapted to at least three films.
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