Grotesque Applications in Folk Stories Based on Narrative of Eskandar Nameh by Naghali

With the establishment of the Safavid government, Iran entered a new phase in history and literature. The special attention to popular culture during this period led to popular literature and folk tales. Addressing folk tales during this period is not only about entertaining and preserving ethnic values and historical events, but also reflecting political, social, ethical issues and criticizing the rulers of the Safavid society in a humorous fashion. These stories were generally narrated in cafes and public spaces where ethical issues were not respected. Hyperbole, paradox, intermingling of human and animal elements, offensive language, profanity, cursing, are the main features of these stories that put them in the Grotesque genre. In this paper, after describing Grotesque and its characteristics, the authors have studied this species in folk literature by relying on Eskandar Nameh of transcriptive writing, by using a descriptive-analytic method and collecting the findings. The grotesque themes of this work appear to be a function of expressing the events of time and criticizing the inadequate characters (depersonalization, derangement, abnormal and disturbing appearance), hyperbole, paradox, and offensive language, torture and curse are Grotesque features in these works, and it seems, they function to express and criticize the events of the time.Keywords: Folk literature, Eskandar Nameh by Naghali, Humor.