Definition and Purposes
 Focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and
other features particular to a specific region.
 Regional character types, use of dialect, themes of old
versus new ways
 Contributed to the reunification of the country and the
building of national identity toward the end of the
nineteenth century.
 A travel literature that introduced readers to their own
nation.
Narrator
 The narrator, if present in the tale as a character, is
typically an educated observer from the world beyond.
 Narrator learns something from the characters while
preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes
ironic distance from them.
 The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk
and urban audience.
Setting
 The emphasis is frequently on nature
or geography and its limitations.
 The plot of the story may involve the
incursions of civilization on the
place (trains, boats, tourism, etc.)
 Settings may become symbolic or
mythological
 tall mountains
 ancient trees
 ruins of previous civilizations.
Plantation Tradition
 Subcategory of Southern local color or regionalism popular
primarily after the Civil War.
 The term "plantation tradition" applies to works that look
back nostalgically to the times before the Civil War,
before the "Lost Cause" of the Southern Confederacy was
lost.
 Myth: Idealized, well-ordered agrarian world and its values:
 Chivalry toward women
 Courage, integrity, and honorable conduct among gentlemen
 Pride in and loyalty toward one's region
What’s wrong with this picture of “happy”
plantation life?
False Portrayals
 False metaphor of a plantation "family" with white
and African American members, with a white master
at the head.
 In keeping with its hierarchical ideals, stories of this
tradition wrongly portrayed African Americans as
happier under slavery.
Settings
 The "ruined plantation," a site of desolation and loss.
Through the tale, the plantation is reconstructed as an
Edenic spot in slavery times for masters and slaves
alike.
 The plantation may be now overgrown and destroyed
by the mercantile north.
 As in other local color fiction, the golden age of the
past contrasts with a present of loss and desolation.
Characters
 The tale is often told by an ex-slave who reminisces
fondly about the bravery, kindness, and aristocracy of
his owners and fondly recalls the rituals of life before
the war.
 Customs and rituals of the South appear in a glow of
nostalgia, with no hint of the injustices of slavery.
 The listener or recipient of the tales is one who does
not understand the South (a Northerner, for example)
Names
 Honorifics for slaves: “Uncle” and “Aunt” were used
by whites for older African Americans as a mark of
respect, but of course titles (Mr., Mrs.) were wrongly
denied them.
 Generic names for whites: “Mr. John” or “Mr.
Charlie” and “Miss Anne”
Charles W. Chesnutt
 Satirizing the plantation tradition
 Charles W. Chesnutt, the first African
American writer to be published in The
Atlantic Monthly: “The Goophered
Grapevine” (1887).
Purposes
(from Kenneth Warren, Black and White Strangers )

Fears of social change: "The happy-go-lucky darky images of the
antebellum South could be contrasted favorably to the images of
impoverished, potentially dangerous blacks of post-Reconstruction. Such
contrasts were staples of plantation fiction and minstrelsy, both of which
were going strong through the 1890s.”
 Primitivism: The needs fulfilled by these images were not solely racial:
'For many white audiences the black African was the creature of a preindustrial life style with a pre-industrial appetite,' allowing whites to
indulge their nostalgia for a lifestyle that was no longer available to them
as they congregated in urban centers.

Nostalgia: “The promise of black America was an assurance that old
ways and old pleasures were recuperable. Of course the old ways were
beyond recovery" (119).
Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings (1881)

The frame stories--an elderly
African-American narrator
telling tales to a young white
boy--recall the plantation
tradition.

Tales themselves, which are
based on black folktales, are
frequently subversive of the
tradition.


“Master and Old John”
stories in which “Old John”
uses his supposed stupidity to
outwit his master using the
master’s own prejudices.
Animal fables in which an
animal with less power (such
as a rabbit) outwits an animal
with more power.
HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP
FOR MR. FOX
 1. "Uncle Remus, " said the little boy one evening,
when he had found the old man with little or
nothing to do, "did the fox kill and eat the rabbit
when he caught him with the Tar-Baby?"
 2. "Law, honey, ain't I tell you 'bout dat?" replied
the old darkey, chuckling slyly. "I 'clar ter grashus I
ought er tole you dat, but ole man Nod wuz ridin'
on my eyelids twel a leetle mo'n I'd a dis'member'd
my own name, en den on to dat here come yo'
mammy hollerin' atter you.
HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR
MR. FOX
 3. "W'at I tell you w'en I fus' begin? I tole you Brer
Rabbit wuz a monstus soon beas'; leas'ways dat's w'at I
laid out fer ter tell you. Well, den, honey, don't you go
en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem days Brer
Rabbit en his fambly wuz at de head er de gang w'en
enny racket wuz en han', en dar dey stayed.
 4. 'Fo' you begins fer ter wipe yo' eyes 'bout Brer
Rabbit, you wait en see wha'bouts Brer Rabbit
gwineter fetch up at. But dat's needer yer ner dar.
HOW MR. RABBIT WAS TOO SHARP FOR
MR. FOX
 5. "W'en Brer Fox fine Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de Tarbaby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun' en
laff. Bimeby he up'n say, sezee:
 6. "'Well, I speck I got you dis time, Brer Rabbit,' sezee;
'maybe I ain't but I speck I is. You been runnin' 'roun'
here sassin' atter me a mighty long time, but I speck
you done come ter de cen' er de row. You bin currin' up
yo' capers en bouncin' 'roun' in dis naberhood ontwel
you come ter b'leeve yo'se'f de boss er de whole gang.
 7. En der you er allers some'rs whar you got no
bixness,' ses Brer Fox, sezee. 'Who ax you fer ter come
en strike up a 'quaintence wid dish yer Tar-Baby? En
who stuck you up dar whar you iz? Nobody in de
'roun' worril. You des tuck en jam yo'se'f on dat TarBaby widout waintin' fer enny invite,' sez Brer Fox,
sezee, 'en dar you is, en dar you'll stay twel I fixes up a
bresh-pile and fires her up, kaze I'm gwinteter
bobbycue you dis day, sho,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.

"Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty 'umble,
 8. "'I don't keer w'at you do wid me, Brer
Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat
brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'but
don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.
 9. "'I ain't got no string,' sez Brer Fox, sezee,
'en now I speck I'll hatter drown you,' sezee.
 10. "'Drown me des ez deep es you please,
Brer Fox," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'but do
don't fling me in dat brier-patch, ' sezee.
 11. "'Dey ain't no water nigh,' sez Brer Fox, sezee, 'en
now I speck I'll hatter skin you,' sezee.
 12. "'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch
out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by de roots, en cut
off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling
me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.
 13. "Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he
cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de
brierpatch. dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck
de bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang 'roun' fer ter see w'at wuz
gwinter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call im, en way up de
hill he see Brer Rabbit settin' crosslegged on a chinkapin log
koamin' de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat
he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling
back some er his sass, en he holler out:
 14. "'Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox--bred en bawn in a
brier-patch!' en wid dat he skip out des ez lively as a cricket in de
embers."