Though Southern fiction since the war has been provincial it has not
been sectional. Without exception the writers have echoed the words
of Joel Chandler Harris: " What does it matter whether I am a North
erner or a Southerner if I am true to truth, and true to the larger truth,
my own self? My idea is that truth is more important than sectionalism,
and that literature that can be labeled Northern, Southern, Western,
or Eastern, is not worth labeling at all"; and, as he put it at another
time, "Whenever we have a Southern literature, it will be American
and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be the work of g*enius, and it will
take all sections by storm." Essentially the same spirit is to be found
in the claim of Thomas Nelson Page that in his writings he never
wittingly wrote a line which he did not hope might bring about a better
understanding between the North and the South, and finally lead to a
more perfect Union. Thus Southern writers have endeavored to further
that most important task of the present generation the promotion
of a real national spirit.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE
THE DANCE IN PLACE CONGO (PAGE 314)
QUESTIONS, i. What details are given about Congo Square?
2. What musical instruments are used in connection with the dance? 3. Describe the "bamboula."
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
In the several volumes of Uncle Remus stories "Uncle Remus, his Songs and his Sayings," "Nights with Uncle Remus," to mention only the two earliest and most important of these collections Joel Chandler Harris has done his most distinctive work as a writer in pre serving the folklore of the negro in his American environment. As he himself stated, he was simply the compiler and editor of the stories that he had picked up in his contact with negroes. But he is absolutely the creator of the setting of the stories, Uncle Remus, the group of negroes associated with him, the little boy to whom the stories are told, and the rest, which gives one of the best-sustained studies American literature has of the old plantation negro. Inasmuch as character is something more appreciated by readers generally than folklore, it may be surmised that the primary interest in the Uncle Remus books is more frequently than not this delineation of the gentle old darky.
