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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a "marketplace spectacle"?

2. Bakhtin considers "thrashing" ambivalent, rather than strictly negative, because:

3. Bakhtin believes that novels are:

4. What are the "Catchpoles" of which Rabelais writes?

5. The verbal interactions between the Renaissance marketplace hawker and the crowd were above all:

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the marketplace become an indicator of folk culture in general?

2. What was Rabelais' relationship with the fairs based upon?

3. What does Rabelais parody with the character of Janotus de Bragmardo?

4. Why do modern readers find it difficult to read Rabelais' novel?

5. Describe two episodes of beatings or injury are specifically centered around the theme of feasting.

6. In general, what happened to the use of humor in literature after Rabelais' time?

7. What does tripe represent, in Bakhtin's analysis?

8. How is degradation expressed, in terms of Rabelais' grotesque realism?

9. What is important about the figure of the physician in Rabelais' novel?

10. What about the episode of the Lord of Basche is carnivalesque?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What connections do Bakhtin and the authors of the Foreword and the Prologue draw between Bakhtin and Rabelais? How were their lives and times similar? What common themes are evident in their writing? In which important ways do they differ?

Essay Topic 2

Explain the role that herbalists, druggists, and physicians occupied in Renaissance France, and how Bakhtin incorporates them into his study of the marketplace in Rabelais' novel. How does Bakhtin relate the material body to physicians and medicine? How does Rabelais portray bodily ailments, physicians, heath, life, death, and birth?

Essay Topic 3

What roles do games play in Rabelais' novel and in the Renaissance? Discuss how games and gaming fulfill an "unofficial" social role as opposed to an "official" one. What images, traditions, and symbols does Bakhtin associate them with? How are games representative of folk culture? How did games and gaming change after the Renaissance?

(see the answer keys)

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