Fryeing

"Hence every work of literature has both fictional and a thematic aspect, and the question of which is more important is often simply a matter of opinion or emphasis in interpretation...[ The History of Tom Jones, a Founding and Sense and Sensibility] are strongly fictional in emphasis compared to Uncle Tom's Cabin or Grapes of Wrath....They in turn are fictional in emphasis compared to The Pilgrim's Progress..." - Frye 53

I think I grasp an idea that I believe was professed in this small section of Frye's Theory of Modes. What I think this basically means is that any piece of literature can be fictional in emphasis when compared to another piece of writing. For instance, the Bible is a piece of fiction when compared to a math textbook or a scientific article of the mating habits of the hairy-nosed wombat.

When a person reads a something, whether a novel or a scrap of a note they found on the sidewalk, they are mentally comparing it to all of the other things they have read, to be able to categorize what they are reading. Does it resemble Poe more than Dickens, or maybe even King? (A perfect example is when I am reading Don Quixote, I am often reminded of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with all of his nonsensical witticisms and odd jargon.) It's impossible to read something and not allude it's texts or ideas to those that you have already read. Or at least it is impossible for me.
A piece is always read in some form of someone's opinion and how they read or interpret the text can even change depending on their mood. Maybe it reminds them of a novel they disliked to automatically they dismiss it as being "bad" or at least not in their tastes.

So in closing how a work is perceived changes drastically from person to person and can even shift one way or the other when compared to other different works.
-Claire