![]() The post-war setting of the storytelling is a romanticized snapshot of plantation life. Entranced by this folklore, he created a genial but stern character named Uncle Remus – the stereotype of the dialect-speaking "venerable old darkey" – who tells these stories to a rosy-cheeked child referred to as "Miss Sally's little boy." Harris, a white journalist who worked as a teenage newspaper apprentice on a Georgia plantation during the Civil War, heard these stories from African-Americans, while spending many hours in conversation with the inhabitants of the soon to-be-former slave quarters. No one can say for certain when or where it first originated, but in the U.S., the most popular version comes from Joel Chandler Harris' 1880 collection, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. Wagner explores how hundreds of variants of this tale, passed on through the oral tradition, are present throughout the world in regions as far-ranging as the Philippines, India, Africa, Corsica, Colombia and Brazil, as well as among several American Indian tribes. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. The question the story addresses is a fundamental one: Who controls access to food and water? Or, more crucially, who controls access to food and water when the rules have been turned upside down by giant forces like colonialism, slavery, global trade and the loss of the commons to enclosures?įar from being a simple folk tale, the tar baby story is "a collective work in political philosophy," says Berkeley professor Bryan Wagner in his fascinating new book The Tar Baby, A Global History.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Tar Baby Subtitle A Global History Author Bryan Wagner But like all fables, it is a double-barreled affair, with entertainment firing in tandem with a serious message. The tar baby story in which Bre'r Rabbit outwits Bre'r Fox is a classic trickster folk tale. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill At heart, they're all about who controls access to food and subverting the powers that be, a new book argues. This 1880 book helped popularize the story of Bre'r Rabbit outwitting Bre'r Fox, but versions of the tale exist around the world. Detail of the cover of Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, By Joel Chandler Harris.
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