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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 16, Chapter 7 - Rabelais' Images & His Time.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What event that Rabelais relates does he assert is the origin of the name of the city of Paris?
(a) Pantagruel's education in the druggists' shops.
(b) An earthquake that disrupts Carnival.
(c) Gargantua's drenching of the city in urine.
(d) A battle won by the French against the English.

2. What actual event probably inspired Rabelais' story of Pantagruel's birth?
(a) The French victory of a battle with the Spanish.
(b) An earthquake which devastated southern France.
(c) An unusual heat wave and drought.
(d) A famine resulting from an unusually cold winter.

3. "Fat William," of comic folklore, symbolized:
(a) Bread and wine in bodily form.
(b) Catholicism's huge influence in Europe.
(c) The entire body of the people.
(d) The health risks of obesity.

4. How does Bakhtin define "folly" as it relates to festivity?
(a) Pessimistic.
(b) Ambivalent.
(c) Artistic.
(d) Inaccessible.

5. After Rabelais' time, the use of laughter in literature and culture moved in which direction?
(a) From singular to universal.
(b) From universal to restricted.
(c) From accepted to encouraged.
(d) From spiritual to earthly.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Bakhtin, how did Rabelais invent many of the locales and characters in his novel?

2. What is the image of woman in the Renaissance popular comic tradition?

3. How is the figure of the king treated in Rabelais' writing?

4. What do oaths and curses have in common with town announcements and the calls of vendors?

5. What does Bakhtin consider the "symposium" of Medieval grotesque realism?

(see the answer key)

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