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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. Why does Bakhtin cite Goethe as a source about the nature of Carnival?
(a) Goethe's negative views about the common people provide a counterpoint to Bakhtin's views.
(b) Goethe and Rabelais were contemporaries and corresponded with each other regularly.
(c) Goethe was passionately interested in the festivity.
(d) Goethe was the official organizer of Carnival in Frankfurt.

2. What episode does Bakhtin cite as exemplifying the image of the gaping mouth prevalent in Rabelais' novel?
(a) People living in Pantagruel's mouth.
(b) Gargantua drinking the entire Seine river.
(c) God's breath creating the four winds.
(d) Gargamelle eating an entire cow in one bite.

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

4. Bakhtin defines Rabelais' giants as:
(a) Divine images.
(b) Grotesque figures.
(c) Subhuman creatures.
(d) Debased clowns.

5. How does Bakhtin define "folly" as it relates to festivity?
(a) Pessimistic.
(b) Inaccessible.
(c) Artistic.
(d) Ambivalent.

Short Answer Questions

1. Bakhtin finds food and drink representative of society because:

2. Bakhtin asserts that "The Play in the Bower" influenced Rabelais' work specifically in its:

3. Bakhtin notes that two of the most commonly combined themes in Medieval popular literature relating to monks are:

4. "The Treatise of Garcia of Toledo," which Bakhtin cites, is notable for:

5. What is especially apparent in Rabelais' own "Pantagruelesque Prognostic" prophecy?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What does Bakhtin mean when he writes that popular-festive carnivalesque performances have no "footlights"?

6. What is the role of games in Rabelais' work?

7. How does Rabelais construct the episode of Epistemon's resurrection and of his visions in the underworld?

8. What is the significance of Friar John's description of the monastery belfry as "fecund"?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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