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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 11, Chapter 3 - Popular - Festive Forms.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. To what does Bakhtin compare the various cries of Paris?
(a) A crowded kitchen.
(b) A roaring storm.
(c) A howling wolf.
(d) A sobbing child.

2. The vocabulary of the prologue of _Gargantua_ is:
(a) Quietly reflective and speculative.
(b) Loaded with comparatives and superlatives.
(c) Objective and editorially distant.
(d) Purely abusive and vulgar.

3. What is the image of woman in the Renaissance popular comic tradition?
(a) Negative: woman is the source of all sin, and must be oppressed.
(b) Ambivalent: woman is degraded but simultaneously regenerative.
(c) Materialist: woman is worth money, in her body or from her work.
(d) Positive: woman is the light of the future, and must be celebrated.

4. Why are Rabelais' billingsgate elements considered "coarse and cynical" by most scholars?
(a) Many scholars interpret them only in a modern context.
(b) These elements express a deep distrust of contemporary society.
(c) Many scholars believe that Rabelais himself was bitter from publication disputes.
(d) The Latin derivations of his scatological vocabulary mean "cynical."

5. According to Bakhtin, what is the function of art?
(a) To glorify the artist.
(b) To be beautiful in and of itself.
(c) To be sold for money or services.
(d) To communicate meaningful messages.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Bakhtin find to be the greatest error other critics make in their studies of Rabelais' works?

2. How does Bakhtin define the combination of human and animal organs in Rabelais' novel?

3. In the Prologue of the Third Book, to which contemporary events does Rabelais allude?

4. In the folklore and grotesque realism of Rabelais' works, excrement represents bodies and matter that are:

5. In which element of Shakespeare's dramas does Bakhtin see the overall theme of Rabelais' carnivalesque repeated?

(see the answer key)

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