Un fabulista sureño : Joel Chandler Harris y Uncle Remus, su gran creación

Abstract

The purpose of the present article is to introduce the reader the author of over thirty books, thousands of column-inches in the prestigious Atlanta Constitution and other Georgian newspapers. But, above all, what we have wanted to point out is the fact that Joel Chandier Harris would have deserved a permanent place in literary histories of America if he had only left The Uncle Remus Tales as his cultural contribution. It has seemed convenient to arrange the subject in three parts. The first one claimed to be an introduction of the author's personality being the other two concemed about his great success The Uncle Remus Tales. In this work, Harris presented animal stories or legends told by a former slave. Uncle Remus, who supposedly had "nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery and the period he described". Thematically, The Uncle Remus Tales set forth a rural, southem mythology, a code of behaviour of the underdog, in which cunning and subterfuge replace open resistance. The underdog trickster who survives and triumphs in theses stories is the rabbit which can perfectly be identified with Uncle Remus. When Uncle Remus and the animals talked to Harris , they didn't tell him everything. But they told him enough to create a southern and an American literature of lasting value.