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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Chapter 2 - The Language of the Marketplace.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the "form" of any kind of art express?
(a) Only one possible message.
(b) The materials from which the art is constructed.
(c) A system of values.
(d) Whatever the audience chooses.

2. What in particular forms the basic elements of Rabelais' novel _Gargantua_?
(a) Historical allusions.
(b) Predictions of the future.
(c) Classical myths.
(d) Autobiographical observations of Rabelais' own life.

3. What are the "intelligentsia"?
(a) A group of exclusively male scholars.
(b) The bits of knowledge all people accumulate over their lifetimes.
(c) A group which provides an interpretation of the world.
(d) An elite spy organization.

4. What does Bakhtin argue is the role of dialogue?
(a) To give one character a strong voice.
(b) To oppose the authoritarian word.
(c) To demonstrate thinking out loud.
(d) To move the plot along.

5. Why did Bakhtin feel his times were comparable to those of the Renaissance?
(a) Two political leaders of the different eras were incredibly alike.
(b) Both eras were times of broad social change that left people unsure of how to proceed.
(c) The specific threat of disease was killing many people in both times.
(d) The literatures and cultures of both eras bore a distinct resemblance.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Bakhtin define the novel?

2. What repressive organization was Bakhtin forced to join in order to continue writing?

3. In Rabelais' time, why was the meaning of debasement often ambivalent?

4. How did the French Romanticists respond to Rabelais' works?

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

(see the answer key)

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