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. The purpose of "travesty" in folk festivals was to:
(a) Indicate the importance of travel to an individual's self-development.
(b) Reassert traditional definitions of social and spiritual life.
(c) Irreversibly denigrate everything it could.
(d) Call upon something serious and make it amusing.

2. Mikhail Bakhtin is:
(a) A fictional figure created to be the mouthpiece of an anonymous author.
(b) The most famous Russian writer ever.
(c) A somewhat mysterious but increasingly interesting literary figure.
(d) A vocal Eastern Orthodox cleric.

3. Carnival allowed:
(a) The upper class to oppress relentlessly the lower class.
(b) The mixing of real and unreal, fantasy and fact.
(c) The peasants to sell their crops without paying taxes.
(d) The endurance of the propriety expected of all social classes.

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

5. What repressive organization was Bakhtin forced to join in order to continue writing?
(a) The Soviet Society of National Fiction.
(b) The Russian Union of Writers.
(c) The National Writers' Agency.
(d) The Post-Revolution Press