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 were shocked to hear the Lord's name taken in vain.
(b) They felt that if one could not say something nice, one should say nothing at all.
(c) They viewed such language as predominantly atheistic.
(d) They saw such language as relics of the superstitious Middle Ages.

2. What does young Gargantua study in order to become acquainted with the common folk?
(a) The way young people are educated.
(b) Herbs and medicines.
(c) Interactions between men and women.
(d) Physically demanding activities.

3. The figure of the Physician in the Fourth Book is closely connected with:
(a) Alchemy.
(b) Heresy.
(c) Death and birth.
(d) Thought and spirit.

4. What is a "marketplace spectacle"?
(a) Specifically the public whipping of a criminal in the center of the marketplace.
(b) A theatrical production arranged atop a platform in the center of the marketplace.
(c) A series of booths dedicated solely to bilking customers out of their money.
(d) The mundane goings-on of a typical French Renaissance marketplace.

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

6. What were "street cries"?
(a) The sobs of orphans who live on the street.
(b) The shouted, versified advertisements of market vendors.
(c) The calls of the city bellringer telling the time.
(d) The warnings people yell when they throw the contents of their chamber pot out the window.

7. What does Bakhtin consider the most indispensable element of folk culture?
(a) Carnival.
(b) Death rituals.
(c) Marriage.
(d) Fables.

8. Carnival allowed:
(a) The mixing of real and unreal, fantasy and fact.
(b) The upper class to oppress relentlessly the lower class.
(c) The endurance of the propriety expected of all social classes.
(d) The peasants to sell their crops without paying taxes.

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

10. Mikhail Bakhtin is:
(a) A somewhat mysterious but increasingly interesting literary figure.
(b) A vocal Eastern Orthodox cleric.
(c) A fictional figure created to be the mouthpiece of an anonymous author.
(d) The most famous Russian writer ever.

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

12. What work of literature is parodied in the prologue of _Gargantua_?
(a) Plato's _Symposium_
(b) Dante's _Divine Comedy_
(c) Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_
(d) Malory's _Le Morte d'Arthur_

13. "Tripe" literally refers to:
(a) A type of freshwater fish.
(b) The stomach and bowels of cattle.
(c) The main blood vessel in the brain of a human.
(d) A type of songbird.

14. What repressive organization was Bakhtin forced to join in order to continue writing?
(a) The Post-Revolution Press
(b) The Soviet Society of National Fiction.
(c) The Russian Union of Writers.
(d) The National Writers' Agency.

15. How did the French Romanticists respond to Rabelais' works?
(a) With complete understanding of Medieval and Renaissance culture.
(b) With disgust and negative criticism.
(c) With an appreciation of, and interest in, the grotesque.
(d) They ignored Rabelais completely.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the "intelligentsia"?

2. With what portion of the body is grotesque debasement most concerned?

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

4. What does the "form" of any kind of art express?

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 715 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample