Chart of Modes

	Tragic	Comic	Thematic
Myth	Dionysiac. Pertaining to the Greek god of wine, madness and ecstasy.	Apollonian. Pertaining to classic beauty. Joyous artful, and musical.	Religious.
Romance	Elegiac. Lyric poem of mourning.	Pastoral. Pertaining to rustic life - shepherds and their sheep.	Order of factual events. Purpose of recording.
High Mimetic	Classic Tragedy. Art of human suffering for an audience.	Comic Drama. Strong central hero who fights and wins.	Pride of and pertaining to the nation.
Low Mimetic	Pathos. Appeals to emotions of the audience.	New Comedy. Principle love plot. Stock characters - bragging solider/ angry old man.Rising through the ranks.	Moral stance of individuality. Opposition of the norm.
Ironic	Hero as a victim. Takes the blame for others.	Helpless victim. Mockery of society, satirical, and ostracized protagonist.	A break in the continuity of characters, plot, and events.

“The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.”
- Giambattista Vico

Aha. I do believe this sounds familiar. What I think Vico is saying here echoes in the ideas of Frye. Criticism is true in it's self even if it isn't precisely accurate to the piece of literature and the authors so-called intentions. What I'm getting from Frye is that there is no right or wrong way to go about criticism, there's just more to it than a simple matter of taste and opinion. There is a formula, a pattern of truths that form a piece of literature into what it is and more importantly, how it is; mythic, packed with pathos, or hurling stones of irony at our tragic hero. The truth is in the words; the sentences and phrases that make up the literature, not in the manner it is scrutinized.
So back to Vico, we can't understand a piece of literature by knowing it's criticism , or the resulting reactions to it. The only way to know the literature is to read it and see the truth in the words themselves.