On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy

"Mr. Jones' aim in this challenging and profoundly interesting book is to discover what Aristotle was really saying about the drama in his Poetics, and to test these discoveries upon plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. He believes that, at certain crucial points, Aristotle has been misinterpreted by successive traditions of classical scholarship: for example, 'there is no evidence that Aristotle entertained the concept of the tragic hero'. He examines the implications of Aristotle's dictum that the characters in plays are there for the sake of the action; he discusses the exact application of such key terms as mimesis and hamartia. Having cleaned the Poetics of the false meanings which he believes have been imposed upon it by neo-classical and romantic modes of thought, Mr. Jones devotes the rest of his book to Aeschylus' Oresteia, to Sophocles' Electra, Ajax, Antigone and the two Oedipus plays, and the Electra of Euripides. His interpretations of these works are fresh, cogent, illuminating: the stress he lays, for instance, upon the significance of the oikos in Greek legend and moral thought gives us a memorable insight into the action of Aeschylus' trilogy. His conclusions, too, regarding the central place of the mask in Tradegy are as convincing as they are original, and his application of them to Euripides' work, in all its diversity and notorious un-evenness, is particularly rewarding. Whether or no we agree with Mr. Jones' exegesis at every point, we shall surely be impressed by the main lines of his argument, for he has enabled us to get inside the Greek mind and understand better how the Greeks felt about the subjects and methods of their supreme drama." -- Publisher.