This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 3, Intro. cont. & Chapter 1 - Rabelais in the History of Laughter.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Comic rituals in Medieval and Renaissance Europe were:
(a) Freed of the trappings of religious dogma and mysticism.
(b) All that which linked the living to the dead.
(c) Taboo in all settings but the royal court.
(d) Necessary to mercantile transactions.

2. What does Bakhtin find to be the greatest error other critics make in their studies of Rabelais' works?
(a) They treat Rabelais as a prophet of literary upheavals.
(b) They classify Rabelais as just as important as Shakespeare and Cervantes.
(c) They read Rabelais' works as allegory only.
(d) They neglect to explore the element of the Renaissance folk culture.

3. How are Bakhtin and Rabelais similar?
(a) They both directly challenge the government by running for political office.
(b) They live in the same country.
(c) They both write mostly novels.
(d) They both subvert the social prohibition on laughter, satire, and irony.

4. How, according to Bakhtin, does the current Russian literary criticism approach Rabelais' works?
(a) By reviving their content in new, twentieth-century forms.
(b) By denouncing them as counterproductive to the ongoing Russian Revolution.
(c) By sharing them with an eager public.
(d) By trying to correctly interpret the source of the cultural laughter within them.

5. What was unique about the Russian Revolution?
(a) People of all classes and occupations were centrally involved.
(b) It continues into the present day.
(c) It was purely a religious revolt.
(d) Only the elite class was involved.