Harris's Short Animal Stories: a socio-linguistic point of view

Abstract

A fable is a short and at first glance funny animal story which is used to teach something. Joel Chandler Harris, a southern journalist, presented in 1880 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¿. In the fictional framework of the stories, a plantation owner¿s little son listened and questioned the old man about the animals, just as Harris, as a Middle Georgia youth, had also listened to the slaves telling stories. All the tales have linguistic, literary and historical importance from the moral and social points of view. Harris with The Uncle Remus Tales brings us back to the time of Aesop and La Fontaine. Like these authors, Harris, through the power of words, used the metaphorical world of the fable to instruct and seduce the reader.