View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why did Renaissance humanists attempt to suppress oaths and profanities?
(a) They viewed such language as predominantly atheistic.
(b) They saw such language as relics of the superstitious Middle Ages.
(c) They felt that if one could not say something nice, one should say nothing at all.
(d) They were shocked to hear the Lord's name taken in vain.

2. What do Rabelais' various works indicate about the popular notion of urination?
(a) Urination is a medical mystery that baffles doctors.
(b) Urination fertilizes the earth and creates bodies of water.
(c) Urination can only be used for comic purposes.
(d) Urination is disgusting and should be done privately.

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

4. How are Bakhtin and Rabelais similar?
(a) They both write mostly novels.
(b) They live in the same country.
(c) They both directly challenge the government by running for political office.
(d) They both subvert the social prohibition on laughter, satire, and irony.

5. What type of work did Rabelais often publish, especially for the fairs?
(a) Political treatises.
(b) Religious tracts.
(c) Biographies of public figures.
(d) Calendars or almanacs.

6. Bakhtin connects Medieval "seriousness" most closely to:
(a) Fear, weakness, and violence.
(b) Inspiration and hope.
(c) Scholarly activities.
(d) Feasting, spectacles, and sex.

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

8. Why, according to Bakhtin, does Rabelais treat excrement ambivalently?
(a) Because it exclusively connotes badness or evil.
(b) Because its purpose was a mystery in the Renaissance.
(c) Because it is evidence of humankind's presence on the earth.
(d) Because it is intermediate between earth and body.

9. Did the "unofficial" and "official" forms of speech ever coincide?
(a) Yes, except for religious holidays.
(b) No, both forms of speech were highly regulated.
(c) No, except during times of war.
(d) Yes, especially during festivals.

10. How, according to Bakhtin, does the current Russian literary criticism approach Rabelais' works?
(a) By trying to correctly interpret the source of the cultural laughter within them.
(b) By denouncing them as counterproductive to the ongoing Russian Revolution.
(c) By reviving their content in new, twentieth-century forms.
(d) By sharing them with an eager public.

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

12. Why does Friar John beat thousands of men in his abbey?
(a) As a show of force to deter invaders.
(b) To save the abbey's vineyards.
(c) To save France from atheism.
(d) Another Friar challenged him.

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

14. Bakhtin considers "thrashing" ambivalent, rather than strictly negative, because:
(a) The act of thrashing is done to punish the individual.
(b) The act of thrashing is done out of kindness.
(c) The one who is thrashed is also decorated and celebrated.
(d) The one who is thrashed explicitly agrees to the act.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. The purpose of "travesty" in folk festivals was to:

2. Curses in Renaissance folk culture tended to focus most closely upon the victim's:

3. In Rabelais' time, jurons, or profanities and oaths, were most often concerned with:

4. In the Renaissance, bodily excretions were closely associated with:

5. What was the reception of Rabelais' work in the eighteenth century?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 716 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample