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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Bakhtin interpret Rabelais' work as a response to the hardships of France in 1532?
(a) The novel provides a merry alternative to suffering.
(b) The novel chastises the people for bringing suffering on themselves.
(c) The novel reinforces the misery the people suffered.
(d) The novel offers spiritual guidance through hard times.

2. What Renaissance series of works was highly influential to Rabelais' notion of the grotesque body?
(a) The "Nordic Fictions."
(b) The "Indian Wonders."
(c) The "Oriental Tales."
(d) The "New World Chronicles."

3. Bakhtin discusses "Cyprian's Supper," which is a play about:
(a) Figures from the Bible at a great feast.
(b) A wedding banquet for a prince.
(c) A man who fasted for a year.
(d) Greed which results in a shortage of food.

4. "Fat William," of comic folklore, symbolized:
(a) The entire body of the people.
(b) The health risks of obesity.
(c) Bread and wine in bodily form.
(d) Catholicism's huge influence in Europe.

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

6. What particular tradition did Peter the Great bring to Russia from Western Europe?
(a) Market vendors loudly advertising their wares.
(b) Tragic dramas and historical stage-plays.
(c) Clownlike crowning and uncrownings at feasts.
(d) The debasement of the Church during Carnival.

7. In Medieval satires, the dismemberment of portions of the body relates to:
(a) The general conception of the divine.
(b) The human body itself.
(c) The separate portions of society.
(d) The topography of the continents.

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

9. In grotesque realism, the body is most often represented as:
(a) A faulty copy of the Divine.
(b) A whole unit, interior merged with exterior.
(c) Several separate units fighting with each other for superiority.
(d) Subordinate to the higher functions of the brain.

10. What does the etymology of Gargantua's name suggest his name means?
(a) The genitals and the act of sexual intercourse.
(b) The throat and the act of swallowing.
(c) The legs and the height of the individual.
(d) The torso and the mass of the individual.

11. How does Bakhtin say Ivan the Terrible of Russia was similar to Rabelais?
(a) He too challenged old political and social structures.
(b) They both fought bloody battles against the reigning monarch.
(c) He also was a prolific and controversial writer.
(d) They both travelled anonymously to Carnival festivities.

12. Bakhtin defines the early French work "The Play in the Bower" as a:
(a) Melodrama.
(b) Tragedy.
(c) Comic drama.
(d) Farce.

13. From which Catholic ritual does Panurge profit in _Pantagruel_?
(a) Communion.
(b) Saying the Rosary.
(c) Papal indulgences.
(d) The High Mass.

14. What happened to Rabelais after his novel was published?
(a) He was severely censured by the Church, then imprisoned and killed.
(b) He was attacked by the Church and the government, but he remained free and successful.
(c) He was questioned about his loyalty to France, then drafted into the army.
(d) He was praised for his honest portrayals of the people and given a government pension.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. "The Treatise of Garcia of Toledo," which Bakhtin cites, is notable for:

3. Why was gaming very important in the Renaissance?

4. Which side of the Renaissance debate about the nature of women and wedlock did Rabelais tend to take?

5. How does Bakhtin define the episode involving Villon and Tappecoue?

(see the answer keys)

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