The paper considers the bipolar racial model representing African Americans in tragic and / or comic modality in American literature and culture (18th – the beginning of the 20th century). This model was formed in the 18th – beginning 19th century, continued to exist in American abolitionist writings, minstrelsy and plantation novel during the 19th century; having been absorbed by the Black American literary tradition, it underwent a considerable change especially in the Harlem Renaissance period.
