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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. Bakhtin connects Medieval "seriousness" most closely to:
(a) Fear, weakness, and violence.
(b) Inspiration and hope.
(c) Scholarly activities.
(d) Feasting, spectacles, and sex.

2. Why did Renaissance humanists attempt to suppress oaths and profanities?
(a) They viewed such language as predominantly atheistic.
(b) They felt that if one could not say something nice, one should say nothing at all.
(c) They saw such language as relics of the superstitious Middle Ages.
(d) They were shocked to hear the Lord's name taken in vain.

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

4. Clowns and fools are:
(a) Present only at large fairs or gatherings.
(b) Prisoners forced to entertain others.
(c) Restricted to entertaining the royal court.
(d) Everyday representatives of the folk and of Carnival.

5. In Rabelais' time, the word "drum" and the act of drumming connoted:
(a) Death.
(b) Sexuality.
(c) Spiritual awakening.
(d) Nature.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why, according to Bakhtin, does Rabelais treat excrement ambivalently?

2. The vocabulary of the prologue of _Gargantua_ is:

3. "Tripe" literally refers to:

4. What does Bakhtin argue is the role of dialogue?

5. What event that Rabelais relates does he assert is the origin of the name of the city of Paris?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. What does the prologue of _Pantagruel_ parody?

4. Describe the Catchpoles and what they symbolize.

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

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

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

8. How are being drenched in urine or covered in excrement treated in Rabelais' novel?

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

10. How does Bakhtin interpret the prologue of _Pantagruel_?

(see the answer keys)

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