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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 does Bakhtin assert is evident in Rabelais' use of games that combine play and prophecy?

2. What are examples of that which Bakhtin calls "cosmic terrors"?

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

4. In which element of Shakespeare's dramas does Bakhtin see the overall theme of Rabelais' carnivalesque repeated?

5. What is a Renaissance "diablerie"?

Short Essay Questions

1. Discuss the significance of Gargantua's birth.

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

3. Why does Bakhtin choose to relate Goethe to Rabelais' work?

4. How is "folly" ambivalent?

5. What is "cosmic fear," and how is it treated in Renaissance folk culture?

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

7. How did games and gaming change after the Renaissance?

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

What is a "blazon"? How are blazons part of the carnivalesque and grotesque traditions of folk humor? What sorts of people or things were turned into blazons, and why? How is the theme of duality related to the blazon? How does Rabelais employ blazons in his novel?

Essay Topic 3

What is significant about the marketplace in the Renaissance? What is its relation to folk culture? How are social relationships conducted in the environment of the marketplace? How are the "street cries" significant aspects of folk culture? What other "unofficial" elements of communication, social commentary, and social interaction are especially prevalent in the marketplace? Are there any carnivalesque elements of the marketplace?

(see the answer keys)

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