Robert Kaske

Robert Earl Kaske (1 June 1921 – 8 August 1989) was an American professor of medieval literature. Kaske studied liberal arts at Xavier University and was called to service for the Reserve Officers' Training Corps during his undergraduate study. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1950. He continued in academia, teaching English, where he became an assistant professor and then an associate professor, also earning a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1964, Kaske began working at Cornell University. He founded a medieval studies graduate program and earned another Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977. Throughout his career, he published over 60 articles. Kaske was known for rejecting the "New Criticism" school of thought, arguing that medieval poetry should be read in context. Kaske married twice and had two children. He died of a brain tumor in 1989.

Robert Kaske—who went by Bob—was born on 1 June 1921 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents were Herman C. Kaske, a postal clerk with the United States Postal Service, and Ann Rose Kaske (née Laake). Robert Kaske attended the boys prep school Elder High School, graduating from the modern English course in 1938.

In 1938 Kaske also matriculated at Xavier University, studying liberal arts. In his junior year he was inducted into Alpha Sigma Nu, and played Peter Dolan in a school production of Father Malachy's Miracle. At the end of the year he was chosen "Host" of Mermaid Tavern, a student literary club. He fulfilled that role as a senior, and was also named editor in chief of The Athenaeum, an undergraduate literary paper, while cofounding a society for students interested in philosophical research. That year Kaske also placed seventh in an intercollegiate writing contest, and appeared in another play, Whispering in the Dark. Kaske graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts on 3 June 1942.

Kaske had joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in his first semester at Xavier, and even before his graduation was ordered to active service. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army's field artillery on 25 May 1942, and ordered to report to Fort Thomas for a physical examination and assignment, with a furlough to account for his June commencement. Speaking to Kaske and 24 others, the commencement speaker, Archbishop John T. McNicholas, stated "[m]ay I assure the Second Lieutenants of this graduating class that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is proud of them. It is happy to know that Xavier University is not only teaching theoretical patriotism, but that it is actually serving our country in the greatest crisis in its history." Kaske served in the Pacific as a platoon leader and company commander, including on Black Sand Beach in Hawaii.

After the army Kaske resumed studies, this time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). As at Xavier, Kaske wrote for a student paper, Factotum. He received his Masters from UNC, and in 1950, his Ph.D.

Kaske's hiring as an English instructor at Washington University in St. Louis was announced in April 1950, before his June dissertation defense. His work there included studies of Dante Alighieri, and in 1952 he was promoted to assistant professor. Kaske subsequently taught at Pennsylvania State University. He was later hired at UNC, where he began his associate professorship on 1 September 1958. Two years later, he was awarded a grant by the American Council of Learned Societies to work on a book, provisionally titled The Heroic Ideal in Old English Poetry. In 1961 Kaske was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study heroism and the hero in Old English poetry, and also served as secretary of the Modern Language Association's Middle English group. From 1962 to 1963, he worked at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

In 1964 Kaske joined Cornell University, where he remained for the rest of his life. At Cornell he founded a medieval studies graduate program, which his colleagues later said "soon came to be recognized as the foremost program of its kind in North America." In 1968—a year in which he was first listed in Who's Who in America—he was awarded another grant by the American Council of Learned Societies, this time to travel to England and search for the sources of imagery in poems by the unknown Gawain Poet. Another grant by the organization followed in 1971, for further research into the heroic ideal in Old English poetry, and that year Kaske also participated in a symposium on Geoffrey Chaucer held at the University of Georgia. During 1972–73 he was a Faculty Fellow of the university's Society for the Humanities, and in 1974 he was named the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, succeeding Herbert Dieckmann [de]. Three years later, he again won a Guggenheim Fellowship, to undertake research on the sourced and methodology for the interpretation of medieval imagery.

Kaske published more than 60 articles throughout his career. One of his primary contributions was to reject the "New Criticism" school of thought that argued that medieval poetry should be read in a contextual vacuum, culminating in a 1988 book, Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: A Guide to Interpretation. As his colleagues wrote a year later, "while this has achieved its due acknowledgment as an indispensable tool for medievalists, no mere book can recreate the rich life its contents enjoyed in the animated version purveyed by Bob himself over three decades."

In January 1944 Kaske, then 22 and home on leave, married Mildred Mae Reinerman, a 21-year-old bookkeeper. The two had a son, David L. Kaske married again in 1958, to Carol Vonckx, an English scholar who herself became a professor at Cornell. They also had a son, Richard; at the time of his death, Kaske also had three grandchildren. He died of a brain tumor on 8 August 1989, at his Ithaca home on North Quarry Street. A funeral was held on the 26th, at Ithaca's Immaculate Conception Church, and a memorial service on 21 October at Sage Chapel, with contributions suggested to the university library's Dante-Petrarch or Icelandic collections.

Articles

• Kaske, Robert E. (July 1951). "The Use of Simple Figures of Speech in Piers Plowman B: A Study in the Figurative Expression of Ideas and Opinions". Studies in Philology. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLVIII (3): 571–600. JSTOR 4172984.
• Kaske, Robert E. (April 1957). "Gigas the Giant in Piers Plowman". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LVI (2): 177–185. JSTOR 27706901.
• Kaske, Robert E. (November 1957). "Langland and the Paradisus Claustralis". Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University Press. LXXII (7): 481–483. JSTOR 3043508.
• Kaske, Robert E. (December 1957). "The Knight's Interruption of the Monk's Tale". ELH. Johns Hopkins University Press. 24 (4): 249–268. JSTOR 2871956.
• Kaske, Robert E. (July 1958). "Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf". Studies in Philology. LV (3): 423–456. JSTOR 4173241.
• Kaske, Robert E. (June 1959). "The Summoner's Garleek, Oynons, and Eek Lekes". Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University Press. LXXIV (6): 481–484. JSTOR 3040589.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1959). "Two Cruxes in 'Pearl': 596 and 609-10". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XV: 418–428. JSTOR 27830395.
• Kaske, Robert E. (September 1959). "An Aube in the Reeve's Tale". ELH. Johns Hopkins University Press. 26 (3): 295–310. JSTOR 2871790.
• Kaske, Robert E. (October 1959). "Langland's Walnut-Simile". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LVIII (4): 650–654. JSTOR 27707361.
• Kaske, Robert E. (December 1959). "The Sigemund-Heremod and Hama-Hygelac Passages in Beowulf". Publications of the Modern Language Association. Modern Language Association. LXXIV (5): 489–494. JSTOR 460497.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1960). "January's "Aube"". Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University Press. LXXV (1): 1–4. JSTOR 3040559.
• Kaske, Robert E. (June 1960). "Weohstan's Sword". Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University Press. LXXV (6): 465–468. JSTOR 3040330.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1960). "Eve's 'Leaps' in the Ancrene Riwle". Medium Ævum. The Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature. XXIX (1): 22–24. JSTOR 43626839.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1961). "Dante's 'DXV' and 'Veltro'". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XVII: 185–254. JSTOR 27830427.
• Kaske, Robert E. (July 1962). "The Canticum Canticorum in the Miller's Tale". Studies in Philology. The Mediaeval Academy of America. LIX (3): 479–500. JSTOR 4173387.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1963). ""Ex VI Transicionis" and its Passage in Piers Plowman". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LXII (1): 32–60. JSTOR 27714179.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1964). "The Reading Genyre in The Husband's Message Line 49". Medium Ævum. The Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature. XXXIII (3): 204–206. JSTOR 43627117.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1967). "A Poem of the Cross in the Exeter Book: 'Riddle 60' and 'The Husband's Message'". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XXIII: 41–71. JSTOR 27830826.
• Kaske, Robert E. (October 1967). "The Silver Spoons of Sutton Hoo". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLII (4): 670–672. JSTOR 2851097.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1968). "Piers Plowman and Local Iconography". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 31: 159–169. JSTOR 750639.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1968). "Some Newly Discovered Wall-Paintings at Madley, Herefordshire". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XXIV: 464–471. JSTOR 27830859.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1971). ""Sì si conserva il seme d'ogne giusto": (Purg. XXXII, 48)". Dante Studies. The Dante Society of America. LXXXIX: 49–54. JSTOR 40166090.
• Kaske, Robert E. (July 1971). "Beowulf and the Book of Enoch". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLVI (3): 421–431. JSTOR 2851906.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1972). "Horn and Ivory in the Summoner's Tale". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. Modern Language Society of Helsinki. LXXIII (3): 122–126. JSTOR 43345340.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1975). "A Dagger in Relief on Stonehenge?". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XXXI: 315–316. JSTOR 27830990.
• Kaske, Robert E.; Springer, Otto & Andersson, Theodore M. (July 1985). "Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America: Einar Ólafur Sveinsson". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. 60 (3): 776–777. JSTOR 2848227.
• Howard, Donald R.; Kaske, Robert E. & Ferrante, Joan M. (July 1986). "Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America: Charles Southward Singleton". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. 61 (3): 765–767. JSTOR 2851651.
• Kaske, Robert E. (Fall 1986). "Pandarus's "Vertue of Corones Tweyne"". The Chaucer Review. The Pennsylvania State University Press. 21 (2): 226–233. JSTOR 25093997.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1988). "Piers Plowman and Local Iconography: The Font at Eardisley, Herefordshire". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 51: 184–186. JSTOR 751272.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1989–1990). "Amnon and Thamar on a Misericord in Hereford Cathedral". Traditio. Fordham University Press. XLV: 1–6. JSTOR 27831237.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1990). "Godfrey's Vengeance for God on Good Friday: Alliterative Morte Arthure, 3430–1". Medium Ævum. The Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature. LIX (1): 128–133. JSTOR 43629289.

Chapters

• Kaske, Robert E. (1965). "The Character "Figura" in Le Mystère d'Adam".In Mahoney, John & Keller, John Esten (eds.). Medieval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures. 56. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 103–110. JSTOR 10.5149/9781469639130_mahoney.
• Kaske, Robert E. (1968). "Beowulf".In Lumiansky, R. M. & Baker, Herschel (eds.). Critical Approaches to Six Major English Works: From Beowulf Through Paradise Lost. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 3–40. JSTOR j.ctv512qvn.

Reviews

• Kaske, Robert E. (December 1959). "Review: "Piers Plowman" and the Scheme of Salvation: An Interpretation of "Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest", by Robert Worth Frank, Jr". Modern Language Notes. Johns Hopkins University Press. LXXIV (8): 730–733. JSTOR 3040398.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1963). "Review: Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse, by Morton W. Bloomfield". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LXII (1): 202–208. JSTOR 27714209.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1963). "Review: Piers the Plowman: Literary Relations of the A and B Texts, by David C. Fowler". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LXII (1): 208–213. JSTOR 27714210.
• Kaske, Robert E. (June 1963). "Chaucer and Medieval Allegory". ELH. Johns Hopkins University Press. 30 (2): 175–192. JSTOR 2872089.
  • A "review article," reviewing A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives, by D. W. Robertson, Jr.
• Kaske, Robert E. (July 1966). "Review: Piers Plowman: The Evidence for Authorship, by George Kane". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LXV (3): 583–586. JSTOR 27714923.
• Kaske, Robert E. (October 1966). "Review: Superbia: Studien zum altenglischen Wortschatz, by Hans Schabram". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLI (4): 762–764. JSTOR 2852344.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1967). "Review: Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity, by Rosemond Tuve". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLII (1): 196–199. JSTOR 2856132.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1970). "Review: A Reading of Beowulf, by Edward B. Irving, Jr". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. The University of Illinois. LXIX (1): 159–161. JSTOR 27705832.
• Kaske, Robert E. (January 1971). "Review: Theology and Poetry in the Middle English Lyric: A Study of Sacred History and Aesthetic Form, by Sarah Appleton Weber". Speculum. The Mediaeval Academy of America. XLVI (1): 188–190. JSTOR 2855128.
• Kaske, Robert E. (November 1974). "Review: The Interpretation of Old English Poems, by Stanley B. Greenfield". Modern Philology. University of Chicago Press. 72 (2): 190–194. JSTOR 436745.