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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What significant thing did translators of Rabelais' work add to their translations?
(a) Lists of games played in their own countries.
(b) Critical inquiry of the validity of Rabelais' portrayal of marketplace culture.
(c) Editorial remarks in the form of footnotes.
(d) Lists of street cries common in their own countries.

2. How does Bakhtin define "carnivalesque hell"?
(a) Leisurely because everyone seems to be on holiday.
(b) Depraved because it encourages wanton sexual gratification.
(c) Negative because everyone, including demons, are always suffering.
(d) Ambivalent because it includes both fear and laughter.

3. Goethe traces the roots of Carnival to the:
(a) Greeks.
(b) Mesopotamians.
(c) Phoenicians.
(d) Romans.

4. What is the "sia ammazzato" of which Goethe writes?
(a) A portion of Carnival where everyone tries to blow out each other's candles.
(b) The final event of Carnival, in which the Church gives alms to the poor.
(c) A parade showcasing exotic animals and curious goods from distant lands.
(d) The great feast in the middle of Carnival where everyone eats tripe.

5. To what are "swabs" most closely related?
(a) The spiritual intellect's conversant function
(b) The material body lower stratum.
(c) The liver and gallbladder's production of bile.
(d) The material body upper stratum.

6. What does Bakhtin consider the "symposium" of Medieval grotesque realism?
(a) Vows spoken between lovers.
(b) The tradition of festive speech.
(c) Bear-baiting in the town square.
(d) Refereed debates between two clergymen.

7. What are the languages involved in what Bakhtin terms the "triple linguistic process" of Rabelais' time?
(a) Classic Latin, Medieval Latin, and vernacular French.
(b) Classic Latin, Middle French, and vernacular French.
(c) Medieval Latin, Old French, and Middle French.
(d) Medieval Latin, Middle French, and Middle German.

8. How does Bakhtin interpret Rabelais' term "agelast"?
(a) It is the person who brings up the rear of the great Carnival parade.
(b) It is a person who delights in causing pain to others.
(c) It is a person who is hostile to laughter or who does not know how to laugh.
(d) It is an elderly person whose grouchy moods isolate him/her.

9. Which aspect of Renaissance culture does Bakhtin stress is still apparent in Western society today?
(a) Public thrashings.
(b) Street cries.
(c) Carnival.
(d) Clowns and fools.

10. What is revealed in images of "negation"?
(a) The harmful aspects of society.
(b) The destructive impulse of humanity.
(c) The opposition to the official world.
(d) The refusal of commitment between lovers.

11. Bakhtin asserts that in Rabelais' time, food and banquets always contained a sense of:
(a) Depression and resignation.
(b) Victory and regeneration.
(c) Physical discomfort.
(d) Intellectual stimulation.

12. Bakhtin defines Rabelais' giants as:
(a) Subhuman creatures.
(b) Divine images.
(c) Debased clowns.
(d) Grotesque figures.

13. What are the three categories of the "comic" which Bakhtin cites from Schneegans?
(a) The grotesque, the ridiculous, and the satiric.
(b) The painted, the sketched, and the acted.
(c) The satiric, the clownish, and the visual.
(d) The clownish, the burlesque, and the grotesque.

14. In the example Schneegans offers, what does Rabelais' Friar John assert makes women fertile?
(a) The caress of a king.
(b) Prayer to the protective saint of childbirth.
(c) Eating a lot of tripe.
(d) The shadow of the abbey belfry

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

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Bakhtin interpret Rabelais' work as a response to the hardships of France in 1532?

2. After Rabelais' time, what happens to the "body" as a general social idea?

3. How does Bakhtin say Ivan the Terrible of Russia was similar to Rabelais?

4. What does Rabelais associate closely with the underworld?

5. According to Schneegans, what is the grotesque in art?

(see the answer keys)

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