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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. In the political and religious conflicts of his time, Rabelais always took the ___________ stance.
(a) Catholic.
(b) Scientific.
(c) Cautious.
(d) Progressive.

2. How does Bakhtin define the combination of human and animal organs in Rabelais' novel?
(a) "Scientific."
(b) "Horrifying."
(c) "Grotesque."
(d) "Otherworldly."

3. In the example Schneegans offers, what does Rabelais' Friar John assert makes women fertile?
(a) The caress of a king.
(b) Eating a lot of tripe.
(c) The shadow of the abbey belfry
(d) Prayer to the protective saint of childbirth.

4. Bakhtin generally finds Goethe's sense of Carnival's _____________ to agree with his own views.
(a) Universalism.
(b) Poetic expression.
(c) Religiousness.
(d) Pessimism.

5. Which side of the Renaissance debate about the nature of women and wedlock did Rabelais tend to take?
(a) The Idealizing tradition.
(b) The Gallic tradition.
(c) The English tradition.
(d) The Roman tradition.

Short Answer Questions

1. Bakhtin discusses "Cyprian's Supper," which is a play about:

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

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

4. What does the etymology of Gargantua's name suggest his name means?

5. What word characterizes Medieval thinking, according to Bakhtin?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is "folly" ambivalent?

2. What is the significance of "cuckoldry," and how is it portrayed?

3. How does Rabelais use the element of popular speech known as "coq-à-l'âne"?

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

5. What is the nature of the carnivalesque crowd in Rabelais' novel?

6. What was "prandial libertinism"?

7. What is significant about the language in which Rabelais writes and the sources of many of his words?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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