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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 does Panurge fear if he gets married?
(a) That he will eventually be cuckolded.
(b) That he will not be able to have a son.
(c) That he will marry an ugly woman.
(d) That his wife will never love him.

2. Bakhtin asserts that Rabelais' grotesque conception of the body reflected:
(a) The Renaissance re-envisioning of the cosmos.
(b) The Calvinist idea of predestination and grace.
(c) The Classical philosophy of Epicureanism.
(d) The Medieval doctrine of natural hierarchy.

3. To what are "swabs" most closely related?
(a) The material body lower stratum.
(b) The liver and gallbladder's production of bile.
(c) The material body upper stratum.
(d) The spiritual intellect's conversant function

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a Renaissance "diablerie"?

2. What does Bakhtin consider the "symposium" of Medieval grotesque realism?

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

4. How does Bakhtin say Ivan the Terrible of Russia was similar to Rabelais?

5. How does Friar John interpret the riddle he and Gargantua hear?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

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

6. How is "folly" ambivalent?

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

8. What is the significance of the figure of the androgyne in Rabelais' novel?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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