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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 event that Rabelais relates does he assert is the origin of the name of the city of Paris?
(a) An earthquake that disrupts Carnival.
(b) Gargantua's drenching of the city in urine.
(c) A battle won by the French against the English.
(d) Pantagruel's education in the druggists' shops.

2. In the folklore and grotesque realism of Rabelais' works, excrement represents bodies and matter that are:
(a) One with the earth.
(b) Frightening and terrible.
(c) Mostly comic.
(d) Generally revered.

3. 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 methods of marketplace vendors in overpricing their goods.
(c) The Renaissance system of images that is perpetually regenerative and never decaying.
(d) The Renaissance notion that all which is already established is perfect.

4. In which twentieth-century movement was the grotesque especially evident?
(a) Impressionism.
(b) Expressionism.
(c) Modernism.
(d) Futurism.

5. Who is Janotus de Bragmardo?
(a) A clown who mocks Gargantua at Carnival.
(b) A market vendor scheming to cheat Gargantua.
(c) A scholar sent to recover church bells from Gargantua.
(d) A robber who stumbles across Gargantua's treasure.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why are Rabelais' billingsgate elements considered "coarse and cynical" by most scholars?

2. "Friar John" is heavily associated with:

3. How did Rabelais obtain the material for his writings?

4. What type of work did Rabelais often publish, especially for the fairs?

5. Rabelais' description of Alcibiades reflects:

Short Essay Questions

1. In general, what happened to the use of humor in literature after Rabelais' time?

2. How does Bakhtin get around the prohibition of certain kinds of satire and irony in his own time?

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

4. What does Rabelais parody with the character of Janotus de Bragmardo?

5. What is the underlying nature of all of Rabelais' images?

6. What was the general perception of laughter in the Renaissance?

7. What was the effect of the suspension of social hierarchies during Carnival?

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

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

10. What are the "cris de Paris," or "street cries"?

(see the answer keys)

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