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

2. What do some critics argue has been absent from Russian literature?
(a) A particularly Western type of humor.
(b) Political dissent.
(c) Religious fervor.
(d) Sexually-charged dialogue.

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

4. In Rabelais' time, why was the meaning of debasement often ambivalent?
(a) Because the debased person may choose to deflect the debasement.
(b) Because the person saying the insult never means it seriously.
(c) Because the decaying or excretory organs are closely located to the regenerative genital organs.
(d) Because the head is quite separate from all the other parts of the body, spiritually and materially.

5. How does Bakhtin define the novel?
(a) As a multiplicity of styles.
(b) As a worthless type of literature.
(c) As a single-voiced text.
(d) As a work of pure imagination.