Uncle Remus Uncle Remus Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of African-American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books. He wrote these stories to represent the struggle in the Southern United States, and more specifically in the plantations. He did so by introducing tales he had heard and framing them in the plantation context. He wrote his stories in a dialect that represented the voice of the narrators and their subculture. For this choice of framing, his
Uncle Remus collection has encountered controversy. "Uncle Remus" is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from southern African Americans. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's Fables and Jean de La Fontaine's stories. Uncle Remus is a kindly old freedman who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him. The stories are written in an eye dialect devised by Harris to represent a Deep South Negro dialect. Uncle Remus is a compilation of Br'er Rabbit storytellers that Harris had encountered during his time at the Turnwold Plantation. Harris