Joel Chandler Harris Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris is remembered by many readers as a collector of black folklore in the Uncle Remus stories, an amanuensis for slaves whose forced illiteracy prevented them from writing down their own stories. Often, however, Harris is also seen as a white Southern apologist, with the happy Uncle Remus perpetuating the plantation myth, which is at the same time undermined by the tales' poetic irony--an irony that, according to some critics, Harris probably did not recognize.

Both views are partly correct; several critics, primarily Thomas H. English, have pointed out that there are two fictional characters called Uncle Remus--one living in Atlanta and the other in rural Putnam County. The Atlanta Uncle Remus is often a minstrel figure, puzzled by such things as the phonograph, opposed to education for blacks, and sometimes the butt of jokes for more-sophisticated whites. At other times, however, he uses biting humor to counterattack. The rural Uncle Remus is a far more interesting literary figure--a complex, dignified, clever, controlling, occasionally dishonest, hardworking character whose most important role is to be the chief explicator of a world ruled sometimes by joy, justice, and liberty but more often by cleverness, ruthlessness, self-interest, and greed.

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