Critique of Hugh Grady‟s Concepts of „Aesthetic‟ and „Critical‟ Paradigms

In his The Modernist Shakespeare: Critical Texts in a Material World, Hugh Grady applies Thomas S. Kuhn‟s notion of scientific „paradigm shifts‟ to the domain of literary studies, writing, thus, about „aesthetic‟ and „critical‟ paradigms. Quite aware of the too long tradition of criticism that revolves around the Shakespearean text, Grady states that his study will add very little about Shakespeare himself or the plays themselves. His project, rather, would be “to suspend momentarily that conversation and instead undertake a reflective discourse on the underlying assumptions which make such necessary and sometimes admirable talk possible and which shape and limit it in ways we are only now beginning to appreciate fully.