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

2. "Friar John" is heavily associated with:
(a) Sex and love.
(b) Food and battles.
(c) Nature and the earth.
(d) Intellect and spirit.

3. To what does Bakhtin compare the various cries of Paris?
(a) A howling wolf.
(b) A roaring storm.
(c) A sobbing child.
(d) A crowded kitchen.

4. How does Bakhtin define the novel?
(a) As a multiplicity of styles.
(b) As a worthless type of literature.
(c) As a single-voiced text.
(d) As a work of pure imagination.

5. In the Prologue of the Third Book, to which contemporary events does Rabelais allude?
(a) The defense of France against Charles V.
(b) The Norman Invasion.
(c) The Black Death.
(d) The defeat of the French and Spanish fleets by Admiral Nelson.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does Gargantua steal the bells of the Notre Dame cathedral?

2. The verbal interactions between the Renaissance marketplace hawker and the crowd were above all:

3. According to Bakhtin, what is directly related to the oversized foods common at Renaissance feasts?

4. What does Bakhtin find inadequate in Veselovsky's metaphor of Rabelais as a village boy?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How is Bakhtin's book "double-voiced," as Michael Holquist asserts it is?

3. Why does the speaker of the prologue of the Third Book invite only good men to drink?

4. How is degradation expressed, in terms of Rabelais' grotesque realism?

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

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

7. How does Rabelais describe the human body in the context of grotesque realism?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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