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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Friar John interpret the riddle he and Gargantua hear?
(a) As a representation of a tennis match.
(b) As a promise of Armageddon and the return of Christ.
(c) As an indication of his own increasing wealth.
(d) As a promise of winter floods and summer drought.

2. What are examples of that which Bakhtin calls "cosmic terrors"?
(a) Atheists who insult and threaten God.
(b) Violent beings from another universe.
(c) The sky, the sea, and natural disasters.
(d) Vengeful pagan deities.

3. What word characterizes Medieval thinking, according to Bakhtin?
(a) Scientific.
(b) Hierarchical.
(c) Pessimistic.
(d) Self-contradictory.

4. What do wine and oil symbolize in Rabelais' novel?
(a) Free, festive speech versus religious piety and seriousness.
(b) Sickness and hangovers versus a useful cooking ingredient.
(c) Since both are flammable, they symbolize hellfire.
(d) Hard harvest work in the vineyards and olive groves.

5. What are the three categories of the "comic" which Bakhtin cites from Schneegans?
(a) The satiric, the clownish, and the visual.
(b) The clownish, the burlesque, and the grotesque.
(c) The grotesque, the ridiculous, and the satiric.
(d) The painted, the sketched, and the acted.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Rabelais' novel, the words "to die" are closely associated with:

2. What is revealed in images of "negation"?

3. Where did Rabelais collect most of his rich vocabulary?

4. In the example Schneegans offers, what does Rabelais' Friar John assert makes women fertile?

5. What significant thing did translators of Rabelais' work add to their translations?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the significance of Friar John's description of the monastery belfry as "fecund"?

2. How did games and gaming change after the Renaissance?

3. How does Rabelais respond to the geographical changes of his own time and world?

4. What is the significance of "cuckoldry," and how is it portrayed?

5. What is the role of games in Rabelais' work?

6. How is "folly" ambivalent?

7. What is "cosmic fear," and how is it treated in Renaissance folk culture?

8. What is the significance of the two Russian eras of history to which Bakhtin refers in Chapter Three?

9. What is the connection between the banquet and speech?

10. Why are eating and drinking two of the most important manifestations of the grotesque body?

(see the answer keys)

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