Paradigms in the history of criticism In an essay of 1969 entitled "The change in the paradigm of literary scholarship,") Hans RobertJauss sketched the history of literary methods and postulated that the beginnings of a "revolution" in contemporary literary studies were at hand . Borrowing the concepts of "paradigm" and "scientific revolution" from the work ofThomas S. Kuhn,Jauss presents literary investigation as an analogous undertaking to procedures in the natural sciences. The study of literature, he contends, is not a process involving the gradual accumulation of facts and evidence bringing each successive generation closer to knowledge of what literature actually is or to a correct understanding of individual literary works. Rather, the development is characterized by qualitativejumps, discontinuities, and original points of departure. A paradigm that once guided literary investigation is discarded when it no longer satisfies the requirements posed for it by literary studies. A new paradigm, more suitable for this task and independent of the older model, replaces the obsolete approach until it, in turn, proves unable to cope with its function of explaining past works of literature for the present. Each paradigm defines not only the accepted methodological procedures with which critics approach literature - the "normal" literary scholarship within the academic community-but

also the accepted literary canon. In other words, a given paradigm creates both the techniques for interpretation and the objects to be interpreted.