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

2. According to Bakhtin's semiotic understanding, what irony is inherent within the creative power of language?
(a) All languages are one.
(b) Language does not actually express anything.
(c) No word can actually ever be defined.
(d) The individual expresses him- or herself only through the words of others.

3. Bakhtin believes that novels are:
(a) Inherently confessional.
(b) Random, like stream-of-consciousness.
(c) Socially charged and polemical.
(d) Utterly separate from the author's own life.

4. What is "man's second nature," according to Renaissance Christian doctrine?
(a) The celebratory but degrading impulse toward gluttony, scatology, and sex.
(b) The thoughtfulness of the individual mind.
(c) The way people act differently around those of another social class.
(d) Man's higher spiritual calling.

5. Bakhtin thinks that life is:
(a) Inert, chaotic, and requiring the intervention of art.
(b) Meaningless and futile.
(c) A sacrifice the soul makes to the body.
(d) Organized by human acts of behavior and cognition.