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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Rabelais' time, jurons, or profanities and oaths, were most often concerned with:
(a) Family ties, such as one's in-laws.
(b) Monarchs who subjugated their people.
(c) Sacred themes, such as saints and relics.
(d) Marketplace vendors who cheated their customers.

2. Bakhtin asserts that beatings, death, feasting, and merrymaking are all integral parts of:
(a) Rabelais' view of the proper treatment of foreigners and peasants.
(b) The Renaissance system of images that is perpetually regenerative and never decaying.
(c) The Renaissance notion that all which is already established is perfect.
(d) The methods of marketplace vendors in overpricing their goods.

3. During Bakhtin's time, what genre was being closely defined by the Soviet government?
(a) The lyric.
(b) The biography.
(c) The novel.
(d) The epic poem.

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

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

6. The prologue of _Pantagruel_ is a parody and travesty of:
(a) The pomp and circumstance of the aristocracy.
(b) The fables of ancient Greece.
(c) The ignorance of the peasantry.
(d) The ecclesiastical persuasiveness of the Church.

7. The episode in which Pantagruel and his companions defeat King Anarchus' knights combines:
(a) Love with hate.
(b) Slaughter with feasting.
(c) Nature with artifice.
(d) Human instinct with forethought.

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

9. Why did Bakhtin feel his times were comparable to those of the Renaissance?
(a) Both eras were times of broad social change that left people unsure of how to proceed.
(b) Two political leaders of the different eras were incredibly alike.
(c) The specific threat of disease was killing many people in both times.
(d) The literatures and cultures of both eras bore a distinct resemblance.

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

11. Bakhtin asserts that the advertisement for "pantagruelion" in the Third Book expresses:
(a) The natural mistrust the common folk have for druggists.
(b) The existentialist confusion of Renaissance marketplace culture.
(c) The deep optimism inherent in Rabelais' view of marketplace culture.
(d) The cynicism rampant in Rabelais' writing.

12. Bakhtin associates Friar John's beating of the men with:
(a) Market vendors who assault non-paying customers.
(b) The Dionysian feast of the grape harvest.
(c) The last charge of Charlemagne.
(d) Juvenalian satires of public figures.

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

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

15. 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 person saying the insult never means it seriously.
(c) Because the debased person may choose to deflect the debasement.
(d) Because the head is quite separate from all the other parts of the body, spiritually and materially.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why, according to Bakhtin, does Rabelais treat excrement ambivalently?

2. The vocabulary of the prologue of _Gargantua_ is:

3. Rabelais expresses the debasement of suffering and fear by associating them with:

4. Which answer best describes "grotesque realism"?

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

(see the answer keys)

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