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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Chapter 2 - The Language of the Marketplace.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Rabelais' time, why was the meaning of debasement often ambivalent?
(a) Because the decaying or excretory organs are closely located to the regenerative genital organs.
(b) Because the head is quite separate from all the other parts of the body, spiritually and materially.
(c) Because the debased person may choose to deflect the debasement.
(d) Because the person saying the insult never means it seriously.

2. Medieval parodies were:
(a) Concerned with the positive, humorous aspects of everything.
(b) Limited to parody of individuals.
(c) Limited to religious parody.
(d) Focused on the negative aspects of society.

3. What is "man's second nature," according to Renaissance Christian doctrine?
(a) The way people act differently around those of another social class.
(b) The celebratory but degrading impulse toward gluttony, scatology, and sex.
(c) The thoughtfulness of the individual mind.
(d) Man's higher spiritual calling.

4. When the grotesque was revived in the Romantic era, what did it react against?
(a) The rediscovered works of Shakespeare and Cervantes.
(b) Imaginative fantasy.
(c) Individual, sentimental ideas.
(d) Neoclassical, rational, Enlightenment thought.

5. How did Rabelais obtain the material for his writings?
(a) By studying manuscripts for long hours in monasteries.
(b) By interviewing thousands of market vendors.
(c) By receiving a divine revelation.
(d) By attending many fairs and festivals and observing all the people there.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Bakhtin's semiotic understanding, what irony is inherent within the creative power of language?

2. Comic rituals in Medieval and Renaissance Europe were:

3. What does Bakhtin argue is the role of dialogue?

4. What in particular forms the basic elements of Rabelais' novel _Gargantua_?

5. Bakhtin connects Medieval "seriousness" most closely to:

(see the answer key)

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