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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 is a Renaissance "diablerie"?
(a) A curse one shouts at another, meaning, "To the devil with you!"
(b) A series of prayers one says to beg forgiveness for misbehavior.
(c) A type of behavior manual that purports to stop devilish behavior.
(d) A portion of Carnival in which actors dress up as devils.

2. What particular tradition did Peter the Great bring to Russia from Western Europe?
(a) The debasement of the Church during Carnival.
(b) Clownlike crowning and uncrownings at feasts.
(c) Tragic dramas and historical stage-plays.
(d) Market vendors loudly advertising their wares.

3. How does Bakhtin interpret Rabelais' term "agelast"?
(a) It is a person who delights in causing pain to others.
(b) It is the person who brings up the rear of the great Carnival parade.
(c) It is a person who is hostile to laughter or who does not know how to laugh.
(d) It is an elderly person whose grouchy moods isolate him/her.

4. What is especially apparent in Rabelais' own "Pantagruelesque Prognostic" prophecy?
(a) Predictions concerning lovers.
(b) Predictions of wars and slaughter.
(c) Images of the wrath of nature and of destruction.
(d) Images of the material body and of festivity.

5. Bakhtin asserts that in Rabelais' time, food and banquets always contained a sense of:
(a) Physical discomfort.
(b) Depression and resignation.
(c) Intellectual stimulation.
(d) Victory and regeneration.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happened to Rabelais after his novel was published?

2. Gargamelle gives birth to Gargantua as a result of:

3. Bakhtin asserts that Rabelais' language, and the language of Renaissance France, was above all:

4. How does Bakhtin define the combination of human and animal organs in Rabelais' novel?

5. Bakhtin finds that ___________ are especially closely interwoven with the grotesque body.

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How is "folly" ambivalent?

4. What is the significance of the two Russian eras of history to which Bakhtin refers in Chapter Three?

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

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

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

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

9. Discuss the significance of Gargantua's birth.

10. What is the connection between the banquet and speech?

(see the answer keys)

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