 Imposing value judgments on literature belongs, according to Frye, "only to the history of taste, and therefore follows the vacillations of fashionable prejudice" ("Anatomy" 9).Genuine criticism "progresses toward making the whole of literature intelligible" ("Anatomy" 9) so that its goal is ultimately knowledge and not evaluation.For the critic in Frye's mode, then,

... a literary work should be contemplated as a pattern of knowledge, an act that must be distinguished, at least initially, from any direct experience of the work, .