Dialect in Harris and Chesnut - Class Discussion

If regionalism often involves some kind of distance (between reader/characters or writer/narrator or narrator/characters), "The Wonderful Tar Baby Story" and "The Goophered Grapevine" by Harris and Chesnutt raise the issue with special complications. Think about these initial questions. The significance of some of these answers may also depend on who the actual readers are: your ethnicity, class, region, etc.

 

I. General Comparison

  1. Who is the narrator? (What can you infer?)
  2. Who are the characters?
  3. Who is the implied audience?
  4. Who is the author?
  5. Do these factors increase/decrease your distance from the two stories?

 

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II. Joel Chandler Harris, a white southerner, created the "Uncle Remus" narrator and reworked traditional African-American tales he learned at a plantation and through formal "collection."

  1. What does the orthography of his story convey? Does it seem accurate, stereotypical? How does the staging of this "telling" strike you?
  2. Does the style (narrative moves, language) invite the reader to take a particular attitude towards the story and its teller?
  3. Does Harris capture (or aim for) specific regional features?
  4. What do you imagine the white readership of an 1880s Atlanta, Georgia newspaper would make of this story?

 

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III. Charles Chesnutt, a "free-black" born in Ohio, creates the character of "Uncle Julius" and sets him in relation to a Yankee speculator after the Civil War.  The story was first published in a Boston magazine in 1887.

  1. How is dialect treated in this story? Does the orthography or the style differ from Harris'?
  2. Do you see a subversive dimension to Julius as some critics have?
  3. Does knowing that the author is an African American seem relevant? Does it allow you to see perspectives in the text lacking in Harris'? (Critics note that Chesnutt resisted the rise of Jim Crow.)
  4. Do we share the (presumably white, educated) narrator's perspective? Or that of Julius? How does this frame affect our response?

 

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