Investigating the Application of Popular Culture in the Poetry of Quhestan Poets

Popular culture is an important aspect of poets’ intellectual system and knowledge of its components has a significant effect on facilitating the description of poets’ thoughts and mentalities. Mohammad Hossein Kebriayi, Ibn-e-Hesam Khusfi and Nizari Quhestani are among the Quhestan region (Southern part of Khorasan Province) poets who relied on elements of popular culture to reflect various epistemological, lyrical and moral issues in their poems. In the present paper, using the descriptive-analytical method, the areas of application of popular culture are investigated in four general categories of “beliefs”, “customs (focusing on occupations)”, “irony and allegory” and “local words” in Kebriayi’s poetry. Moreover, several components of this subject are mentioned in the poems of Nizari and Ibn Hussam. It seems that by using these elements Quhestan poets have succeeded in the process of expressing and describing instructional and mystical categories and in making their intentions more tangible. Since the majority of readers of these poets have been the common people, the use of popular culture has been effective in the pragmatics of their words and in creating a powerful link between the target group and their poetry. Using this technique, Kebriayi has knowingly downgraded the level of his speech to create a three-dimensional relationship among himself, the produced text and the target readers. Nizari and Ibn-e-Hesam have mostly portrayed lyrical issues in their poetry.