SOURCE: "Animal Stories," in Satiric Allegory: Mirror of Man, Archon Books, 1969, pp. 57-70.

Leyburn was an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt from a study originally published in 1956, she presents the Uncle Remus animal stories as models of satiric allegory.

"prettie Allegories stealing under the formali Tales of beastes, makes many more beastly then beastes: begin to heare the sound of vertue from these dumb speakers."

Sir Philip Sidney

Brute creation seems sometimes to exist as a satire on mankind. All that the allegorist needs to do is to point the parallel. Moralists have used man's likeness to the animals for instruction in a variety of ways ranging from the strange edification of the medieval bestiary to the reproof of the newspaper political cartoon. There has never been a time when men were not trying to teach each other the lessons to be learned from the...