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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. To what does Veselovsky compare Rabelais?
(a) A village boy.
(b) An ironfisted dictator.
(c) An elderly scholar.
(d) A pious priest.

3. The combination of solemnity and joking in the tone of the Prologue to the Third Book indicates:
(a) The opinion that humor must be subordinate to seriousness.
(b) The importance and necessity of laughter.
(c) The complex explanation of the Prologue to the readers.
(d) The confusion the author experiences with this combination.

4. What does Bakhtin find to be the greatest error other critics make in their studies of Rabelais' works?
(a) They neglect to explore the element of the Renaissance folk culture.
(b) They treat Rabelais as a prophet of literary upheavals.
(c) They read Rabelais' works as allegory only.
(d) They classify Rabelais as just as important as Shakespeare and Cervantes.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What in particular forms the basic elements of Rabelais' novel _Gargantua_?

2. Carnival allowed:

3. Why does Bakhtin consider oaths, curses, and profanities elements of freedom?

4. After Rabelais' time, the use of laughter in literature and culture moved in which direction?

5. Comic rituals in Medieval and Renaissance Europe were:

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe two episodes of beatings or injury are specifically centered around the theme of feasting.

2. What does Bakhtin mean when he argues that laughter affirms the people's unofficial truth?

3. How does the marketplace become an indicator of folk culture in general?

4. What role do oaths and profanities fill in Rabelais' novel?

5. What is Bakhtin's general idea about the purpose of art?

6. What does tripe represent, in Bakhtin's analysis?

7. What do Rabelais' long lists of names and epithets signify?

8. Describe Friar John.

9. What was Rabelais' relationship with the fairs based upon?

10. What is important about the figure of the physician in Rabelais' novel?

(see the answer keys)

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