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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. What does Bakhtin consider the most indispensable element of folk culture?
(a) Marriage.
(b) Carnival.
(c) Fables.
(d) Death rituals.

2. When did the Russian Revolution occur?
(a) 1850.
(b) 1917.
(c) 1945.
(d) 1936.

3. Comic rituals in Medieval and Renaissance Europe were:
(a) All that which linked the living to the dead.
(b) Freed of the trappings of religious dogma and mysticism.
(c) Necessary to mercantile transactions.
(d) Taboo in all settings but the royal court.

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

5. 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 trying to correctly interpret the source of the cultural laughter within them.
(c) By reviving their content in new, twentieth-century forms.
(d) By sharing them with an eager public.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What was the reception of Rabelais' work in the eighteenth century?

3. During Bakhtin's time, what genre was being closely defined by the Soviet government?

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

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

(see the answer key)

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