Criticism > Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism > Ajax, Sophocles - John Jones (essay date 1962)

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John Jones (essay date 1962)

SOURCE: Jones, John. “Ajax.” In On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy, pp. 177-91. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

[In the following excerpt, Jones asserts that Ajax is the sole representative of shame culture in all of the extant Greek tragedies, and he praises Sophocles's handling of the moral atmosphere in the play.]

Seven of [Sophocles's] plays survive. External information about them is meagre and seldom trustworthy, but the very credible statement that the Antigone was Sophocles's thirty-second play,¹ together with the probability that it was produced in 442 or 441, provides a reliable date round which to arrange the surviving seven. In 441 Sophocles was fifty-five. He wrote about 120 plays in all. And so not much less than three-quarters of his output must be attributed to his late middle and old age. This would be a surprising and even suspicious conclusion were it not...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Cedric H. Whitman (essay date 1951)
   2. John Jones (essay date 1962)
   3. Ruth Scodel (essay date 1984)
   4. Marc Ringer (essay date 1998)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Ancient Greece
2. Sophocles