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

2. Which answer best describes "grotesque realism"?
(a) The author's focus must be on bodily gore, blood, death, and dying.
(b) The writing must strive to be as mathematically or geometrically accurate as possible in its descriptions.
(c) The tone of the writing is always dark, Gothic, and depressing.
(d) The bodily element is universal, celebratory, positive, and exaggerated.

3. Curses in Renaissance folk culture tended to focus most closely upon the victim's:
(a) Mind.
(b) Spirit.
(c) Body.
(d) Family.

4. The episode in which Pantagruel and his companions defeat King Anarchus' knights combines:
(a) Nature with artifice.
(b) Love with hate.
(c) Human instinct with forethought.
(d) Slaughter with feasting.

5. Why does Bakhtin consider oaths, curses, and profanities elements of freedom?
(a) Slaves are prohibited from using such forms of speech.
(b) Populist uprisings often have profanities and oaths in their declarations.
(c) They are contrary to official modes of speech.
(d) A person can form any sound into a curse or profanity.

Short Answer Questions

1. The figure of the Physician in the Fourth Book is closely connected with:

2. Bakhtin connects Medieval "seriousness" most closely to:

3. What is a "marketplace spectacle"?

4. What are the "intelligentsia"?

5. Why did Renaissance humanists attempt to suppress oaths and profanities?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. Why do modern readers find it difficult to read Rabelais' novel?

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

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

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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