ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

“Skin me, Brer Fox,” sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, […] “but do please, Brer Fox, don’t
fling me in dat brier-patch,”
Co’se Brer Fox wnater 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 [… ] Brer Rabbit wuz
bleedzed fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out: “‘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. 173
The heroic underdog and his humorous victory connect the piece thematically to the
puppet theatre’s most famous protagonist. Though Sarg’s production is the only recorded
example of The Uncle Remus stories in early twentieth- century American puppetry, it
was a logical addition to the marionette pantheon.
It is a marked departure from previous examples of blackface puppetry, as it is the
first example of an African American text presented by object theatre. Harris’s writings,
likewise, were an important contribution to the nineteenth-century American literary
cannon, which offered few works from African American tradition. Harris preserved
tales from black American enslavement culture at a time when industrial expansion was
steadily encroaching on the local culture of agrarian America.
For these reasons, literary historians have characterized the stories as symbolic of
the burden of enslavement. Debates have centered on themes of subordination/resistence,
173 Except from: Joel Chandler Harris, “How Mr. Rabbit was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox,” Nights with
Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1881), reprinted in:
Melissa Murray and Dominic Perella, “Uncle Remus’ Songs and Sayings (Selected Text),” Uncle Remus:
Social Context and Ramification (Richmond: University of Virginia, 1997), accessed 16 July 2004,
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/toosharp.html.
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