March 2005
A sleuthing Aristotle is a muse to a literary scholar
By: Gail Hinchion Mancini
The words of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle have been handed down through the generations. But to get a feel for what life was like then— in essentially the early days of academia—there are few better sources than the novels of Margaret Doody, John and Barbara Glynn Family Professor in Literature and director of the Ph.D. in Literature.
Doody is the acclaimed author of a series of mystery novels set in ancient Greece featuring Aristotle as a sandal-wearing Sherlock Holmes, each one based on one of his major texts.
A renowned scholar of 18th century literature and the history of the novel, Doody is influenced by such authors Jane Austin, Charles Dickens and Walter Scott. But she has also always loved detective novels.
In a serendipitous moment in the late 1970s—she had been rereading Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” then went to bed with a detective story—she realized that the great philosopher also was a natural detective, equipped with a keen sense of “the evils of human nature.” In writing the first Aristotle novel, “Aristotle Detective,” Doody’s motivation was simple: “If I don’t do this, no one will.”
A friend urged her to enter her manuscript into historical novel contest. She placed second, but the unique intertwining of detective novel and ancient history captured the interest English publisher Bodley Head and Harper & Row in the United States.
In the more than 20 years since, the fate of the series has undergone more plot twists than the novels themselves. First, her luck turned as her publishing house closed and her editor retired, just as she had finished the second novel, “Aristotle and Poetic Justice.” In the late nineties, an Italian journalist stumbled across a copy of the abridged “Aristotle Detective” and convinced Sellerio, a publisher based in Palermo, to publish an uncut translation of the intriguing book. In 1999, the new version was published to rave reviews.
“Aristotle and Poetic Justice” and the subsequent “Aristotle and the Mystery of Life,” and “Poison in Athens” are published in Canada and England by Random House; on the European continent, the Italians remain her greatest fans, although the stories are translated in French, Portuguese, Greek and, soon, Turkish and Polish. Having recently engaged a U.S. literary agent, Doody is optimistic that the series soon will be available in this country.
While she would be comfortable being seen as a writer of detective or mystery stories, she says, “I think of myself as a writer.” Indeed, her life as a novelist has coincided with a distinguished and prolific career as a scholar. Concurrent with her adventures with the “Aristotle” series, she wrote “The True Story of the Novel,” a 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The book reveals Doody’s considerable sleuthing skills as she proposes that what is understood about the origins of the novel overlooks a genre that began in ancient times and flourished across cultures.
Her scholarly writing and her novel writing are “supplementary and complementary” to one another, she says. As she plans the sixth Aristotle mystery (the fifth is complete,) and mentors scholars through the Ph.D. in Literature Program, Doody also has been commissioned to write a non-fiction book about Venice.
Contact Margaret Doody at Margaret.Doody.1@nd.edu