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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Bakhtin's semiotic understanding, what irony is inherent within the creative power of language?
(a) Language does not actually express anything.
(b) No word can actually ever be defined.
(c) The individual expresses him- or herself only through the words of others.
(d) All languages are one.

2. In which twentieth-century movement was the grotesque especially evident?
(a) Modernism.
(b) Expressionism.
(c) Impressionism.
(d) Futurism.

3. Who is Janotus de Bragmardo?
(a) A market vendor scheming to cheat Gargantua.
(b) A scholar sent to recover church bells from Gargantua.
(c) A robber who stumbles across Gargantua's treasure.
(d) A clown who mocks Gargantua at Carnival.

4. In the seventeenth century, the decline of laughter as a primary force in folk culture resulted from:
(a) The need of the public for other forms of diversion.
(b) An increasingly "official" culture of rationalism.
(c) The exhaustion of any new sources of humor.
(d) The declining number of Carnival performers.

5. Curses in Renaissance folk culture tended to focus most closely upon the victim's:
(a) Body.
(b) Spirit.
(c) Mind.
(d) Family.

6. With what is "folk culture" most concerned?
(a) Foreign songs, art, and stories.
(b) The lives of ordinary people.
(c) The affairs of royalty.
(d) Commerce and industry.

7. What does Bakhtin find inadequate in Veselovsky's metaphor of Rabelais as a village boy?
(a) Veselovsky's image excludes the seriousness of the boy as a budding scholar.
(b) Veselovsky's image seems too urban for Rabelais, who only wrote about the countryside.
(c) Veselovsky's image is cynical, but Rabelais actually celebrates regenerative laughter.
(d) Veselovsky's image is too young at heart, for Rabelais wrote only with an old, tired voice.

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

9. When did the Russian Revolution occur?
(a) 1850.
(b) 1917.
(c) 1936.
(d) 1945.

10. With what portion of the body is grotesque debasement most concerned?
(a) The arms and legs.
(b) The head and eyes.
(c) The material lower stratum.
(d) The spiritual interior essence.

11. What does Bakhtin argue is the role of dialogue?
(a) To move the plot along.
(b) To oppose the authoritarian word.
(c) To demonstrate thinking out loud.
(d) To give one character a strong voice.

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

13. Why was Rabelais linked so closely to the Lyon fairs?
(a) Lyon fairs represented one of the largest markets for publishing.
(b) Rabelais was a performing clown for several years in these fairs.
(c) The organizers of the fairs in Lyon banned Rabelais from attending them.
(d) Rabelais was a chief organizer of these fairs.

14. In the Renaissance, bodily excretions were closely associated with:
(a) The inherent evilness or goodness of the individual.
(b) The social status of the individual.
(c) The individual's sexual purity.
(d) The overall health of the individual.

15. How is the Rabelaisian use of tripe an excellent example of grotesque realism?
(a) It is the epitome of disgusting.
(b) It is a drug which offers the user a glimpse of a higher plane of existence.
(c) It merges the positive and negative, or upper and lower, spheres of the body.
(d) It combines fantasy with reality in one type of cuisine.

Short Answer Questions

1. What common fifteenth- and sixteenth-century literary device does Bakhtin identify in the Prologue to the Third Book?

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

3. In Rabelais' works, some causes of diseases associated with the material body lower stratum are:

4. Why, according to Bakhtin, is Rabelais' parody of the Church not considered heresy?

5. What does young Gargantua study in order to become acquainted with the common folk?

(see the answer keys)

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