View a FREE sample

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. During Bakhtin's time, what genre was being closely defined by the Soviet government?
(a) The epic poem.
(b) The lyric.
(c) The biography.
(d) The novel.

2. Bakhtin connects Medieval "seriousness" most closely to:
(a) Fear, weakness, and violence.
(b) Inspiration and hope.
(c) Feasting, spectacles, and sex.
(d) Scholarly activities.

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

4. In the seventeenth century, the decline of laughter as a primary force in folk culture resulted from:
(a) An increasingly "official" culture of rationalism.
(b) The declining number of Carnival performers.
(c) The exhaustion of any new sources of humor.
(d) The need of the public for other forms of diversion.

5. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. In which twentieth-century movement was the grotesque especially evident?

2. With what is "folk culture" most concerned?

3. How, according to Bakhtin, does the current Russian literary criticism approach Rabelais' works?

4. What does Bakhtin find to be the greatest error other critics make in their studies of Rabelais' works?

5. What do some critics argue has been absent from Russian literature?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 327 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample