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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 happened to Rabelais after his novel was published?
(a) He was attacked by the Church and the government, but he remained free and successful.
(b) He was questioned about his loyalty to France, then drafted into the army.
(c) He was severely censured by the Church, then imprisoned and killed.
(d) He was praised for his honest portrayals of the people and given a government pension.

2. What does Bakhtin assert is evident in Rabelais' plan for Pantagruel's journey?
(a) Rabelais' critique of contemporary politics.
(b) Rabelais' own morbid fascination with death.
(c) Rabelais' fanciful, imaginative creation of impossible places.
(d) Rabelais' response to his world's changing geography.

3. What is the image of woman in the Renaissance popular comic tradition?
(a) Ambivalent: woman is degraded but simultaneously regenerative.
(b) Negative: woman is the source of all sin, and must be oppressed.
(c) Positive: woman is the light of the future, and must be celebrated.
(d) Materialist: woman is worth money, in her body or from her work.

4. "Fat William," of comic folklore, symbolized:
(a) The entire body of the people.
(b) Catholicism's huge influence in Europe.
(c) The health risks of obesity.
(d) Bread and wine in bodily form.

5. After Rabelais' time, what happens to the "body" as a general social idea?
(a) The body expands to include the universal consciousness.
(b) The body appears to reduce in size and strength.
(c) The body gets restricted and individualized.
(d) The body is exalted for its natural functions only.

Short Answer Questions

1. Bakhtin asserts that the spirit of Carnival is essentially:

2. In grotesque realism, the body is most often represented as:

3. What did the word "pantagruel" colloquially mean in the Renaissance?

4. What in Rabelais' novel is a travesty of Gospel miracles?

5. According to Schneegans, what is the grotesque in art?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What was "prandial libertinism"?

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

4. How is "folly" ambivalent?

5. Why is the "Hippocratic Anthology" significant to Rabelais' work?

6. How does Rabelais strengthen the exaggerated themes of his grotesque realism?

7. Why does Bakhtin assert that we cannot make the mistake of interpreting Rabelais' images of the material body lower stratum with our modern sensibilities?

8. Describe the figure of "Gros Guillaume" and his significance to Rabelais' novel.

9. How does Rabelais respond to the geographical changes of his own time and world?

10. How does Rabelais construct the episode of Epistemon's resurrection and of his visions in the underworld?

(see the answer keys)

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