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Folktales and Oral Storytelling: Resources in the American Folklife Center Collections

This genre sub-page provides resources related to Animal and Trickster Tales

Animal and Trickster Tales

Animal tales take many forms: fables, magic tales, and tall tales can all be animal tales as well, as long as their characters are animals.

Perhaps the most famous set of animal tales in the US are the Uncle Remus tales -- African American stories featuring characters Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and many others. The stories were well-known in the 19th century South among African American communities and the white Americans who heard them from African American storytellers. In 1880, a white American folklorist named Joel Chandler Harris recorded, curated, and published the tales in a book titled Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: the Folklore of the Old Plantation. In the book, Uncle Remus tells Brer Rabbit stories in southern, African American, colloquial English. Harris constructed the character of Uncle Remus from his memories of the many African American storytellers he had heard tell these stories. The book quickly became famous and spread the Brer Rabbit stories across the US.

There has long been debate over the significance of these tales to African American communities. Some argue that Brer Rabbit's sometimes selfish or wild behavior and the dialect in which the Uncle Remus tales are written down combine to present a demeaning portrayal of African American communities. Others say that because little Brer Rabbit is constantly fighting back against people and animals who are bigger and stronger than him, the stories portray the conditions of slavery, offer wisdom, and share techniques for survival. Jackie Torrence, a storyteller featured in the International Storytelling Collection 1973-2013, was a firm advocate for the importance of telling the Brer Rabbit stories because of their centrality to African American folk culture.

Brer Rabbit is an example of a trickster, a character who uses cleverness, deceit, or humor to chase after what they want. Trickster characters challenge social norms, and their stories help to explain or critique the way things are. Brer Rabbit is small and comparatively weak, but he is extremely clever -- and he draws on that cleverness to escape danger, find food and comfort, and teach the other characters lessons.

Other examples of trickster characters in the AFC archives include Coyote (a Native American animal character), Anansi (an African and African diaspora animal character), Bookie and Ti Malice (Haitian human characters), and sometimes Jack (a European American human character). As these examples demonstrate, trickster characters can be human or animal. Animal and trickster tales are listed together in this guide because of the prevalence of Brer Rabbit stories in the AFC archives.

In the first recording, Evelio Andux, age 37, of Cuban descent (father of French descent), born in Key West, Florida, tells the story of "Miss Martinez Cockroach and Mr. Perez Mouse," in Spanish at Ybor City, Florida, on August 24, 1939. In the second, Evelio's 11-year-old daughter Evelia tells a different version of the same story. Both recordings can be found in the digital collection Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections 1937-1942.

Digital Collections

Selected Collections from the American Folklife Center

Selected Blog Posts and Podcasts from the American Folklife Center

Other Resources from the Library of Congress