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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 do wine and oil symbolize in Rabelais' novel?
(a) Since both are flammable, they symbolize hellfire.
(b) Hard harvest work in the vineyards and olive groves.
(c) Sickness and hangovers versus a useful cooking ingredient.
(d) Free, festive speech versus religious piety and seriousness.

2. What are the three categories of the "comic" which Bakhtin cites from Schneegans?
(a) The painted, the sketched, and the acted.
(b) The satiric, the clownish, and the visual.
(c) The grotesque, the ridiculous, and the satiric.
(d) The clownish, the burlesque, and the grotesque.

3. Bakhtin defines the early French work "The Play in the Bower" as a:
(a) Tragedy.
(b) Melodrama.
(c) Farce.
(d) Comic drama.

4. How does Bakhtin define the episode involving Villon and Tappecoue?
(a) As a historical re-enactment.
(b) As a tragic farce.
(c) As an epic drama.
(d) As a comedic interlude.

5. According to Bakhtin, how did Rabelais invent many of the locales and characters in his novel?
(a) He abused drugs and wrote down his hallucinations.
(b) He wrote many letters asking friends for ideas.
(c) He rewrote stories from his childhood.
(d) He traveled much and met many people.

Short Answer Questions

1. "The Treatise of Garcia of Toledo," which Bakhtin cites, is notable for:

2. What does Bakhtin argue is the relationship between the death of Tappecoue and the episode of the Catchpoles?

3. Bakhtin generally finds Goethe's sense of Carnival's _____________ to agree with his own views.

4. What is the image of woman in the Renaissance popular comic tradition?

5. How does Bakhtin define "carnivalesque hell"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Which elements of Villon and Tappecoue's (Ticklepecker's) episode make it a "tragic farce"?

2. What did the Medieval stage resemble?

3. What was "prandial libertinism"?

4. What is "cosmic fear," and how is it treated in Renaissance folk culture?

5. How do the Medieval and Renaissance pictures of the cosmos differ?

6. What is the role of games in Rabelais' work?

7. Why does the logic of the grotesque ignore the closed surfaces of the body?

8. Briefly describe the two opposing lines of thought in the "querelle des femmes."

9. Why does Bakhtin choose to relate Goethe to Rabelais' work?

10. Why are eating and drinking two of the most important manifestations of the grotesque body?

(see the answer keys)

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