View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 13, Chapter 5 - The Grotesque Image of the Body Concludes and Chapter 6 - Images of the Material Bodily Lower Stratum.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does Gargantua steal the bells of the Notre Dame cathedral?
(a) To decorate the harness of his horse.
(b) To celebrate his marriage.
(c) To sound the alarm for an impending invasion.
(d) To frighten the townsfolk of Paris.

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

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

4. What do wine and oil symbolize in Rabelais' novel?
(a) Since both are flammable, they symbolize hellfire.
(b) Free, festive speech versus religious piety and seriousness.
(c) Hard harvest work in the vineyards and olive groves.
(d) Sickness and hangovers versus a useful cooking ingredient.

5. Why, according to Bakhtin, does Rabelais treat excrement ambivalently?
(a) Because it is intermediate between earth and body.
(b) Because it is evidence of humankind's presence on the earth.
(c) Because its purpose was a mystery in the Renaissance.
(d) Because it exclusively connotes badness or evil.

Short Answer Questions

1. In the seventeenth century, the decline of laughter as a primary force in folk culture resulted from:

2. What is "man's second nature," according to Renaissance Christian doctrine?

3. What are the "intelligentsia"?

4. Why did Bakhtin feel his times were comparable to those of the Renaissance?

5. Bakhtin asserts that in Rabelais' time, food and banquets always contained a sense of:

(see the answer key)

This section contains 388 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample