"In Blue Remembered Hills, Sutcliff recounts how her first novel, Wild Sunrise, was 'a saga of the Roman invasion of Britain, told from the British viewpoint. Its hero, Cradoc, was a young British chieftain, as Victorian-English as anything out of Whyte Melville's Gladiators.' This Cradoc himself seems to have had complex roots. Welsh mythology knows several Caradocs, and the name is often taken to be the same as that of Caratacus, son of Cunobelinus, the hero of the Catuvellauni's resistance to Claudius' invasion of Britain. This would certainly make sense in the context of Sutcliff's Wild Sunrise, though of course the action of The Eagle is set some ninety years later. The sixth-century King Cerdic of Wessex seems to have borne a Anglicized version of the name. The Welsh connection also takes us into Arthurian cycle, and the First Continuation to Chrétien of Troyes' Perceval contains a Livre de Caradoc, describing the adventures of two Sir Caradocs. Finally, at least one Cradoc was important in Sutcliff's own family circle: her naval-officer father had, before she was born, been pilot to Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock (Cradoc in her spelling), who, as she presents it, had 'inspire[d] hero-worship in one young navigating officer that lasted him the rest of his life' . . . These dislocations in time and place are, I suggest, important for our reading of The Eagle as a whole. Guenevere the wife of Arthur is, in some sense, the regal, mysterious wife of Cradoc. Cradoc the resistance leader is the Caratacus who fought against Rome nearly a century before – and also the Sir Christopher Cradock with whom Sutcliff's father served."
The article is an painstakingly detailed look at the acknowledged and identifiable influences and allusions in the novel—of which I get to feel smug about catching most of the Kipling shout-outs, though I missed the neon sign of "The Lost Legion" (1892)—which then goes on to consider how they work together to form a broader resonance in the traditions of both imperial and post-war literature. Her red-haired pilot of whom you told me, battle-fatigued out of the RAF, is considered part of the pattern, too, although the author does not link him to wounded Marcus and that's the first thing that would have occurred to me.
no subject
Indeed! Nice eyes. And nicknamed "Kit," I see, as an Elizabethan Christopher should be.
Per Philip Burton's "Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth: A Festival of Britain?" which I will fetch off JSTOR for you if necessary:
"In Blue Remembered Hills, Sutcliff recounts how her first novel, Wild Sunrise, was 'a saga of the Roman invasion of Britain, told from the British viewpoint. Its hero, Cradoc, was a young British chieftain, as Victorian-English as anything out of Whyte Melville's Gladiators.' This Cradoc himself seems to have had complex roots. Welsh mythology knows several Caradocs, and the name is often taken to be the same as that of Caratacus, son of Cunobelinus, the hero of the Catuvellauni's resistance to Claudius' invasion of Britain. This would certainly make sense in the context of Sutcliff's Wild Sunrise, though of course the action of The Eagle is set some ninety years later. The sixth-century King Cerdic of Wessex seems to have borne a Anglicized version of the name. The Welsh connection also takes us into Arthurian cycle, and the First Continuation to Chrétien of Troyes' Perceval contains a Livre de Caradoc, describing the adventures of two Sir Caradocs. Finally, at least one Cradoc was important in Sutcliff's own family circle: her naval-officer father had, before she was born, been pilot to Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock (Cradoc in her spelling), who, as she presents it, had 'inspire[d] hero-worship in one young navigating officer that lasted him the rest of his life' . . . These dislocations in time and place are, I suggest, important for our reading of The Eagle as a whole. Guenevere the wife of Arthur is, in some sense, the regal, mysterious wife of Cradoc. Cradoc the resistance leader is the Caratacus who fought against Rome nearly a century before – and also the Sir Christopher Cradock with whom Sutcliff's father served."
The article is an painstakingly detailed look at the acknowledged and identifiable influences and allusions in the novel—of which I get to feel smug about catching most of the Kipling shout-outs, though I missed the neon sign of "The Lost Legion" (1892)—which then goes on to consider how they work together to form a broader resonance in the traditions of both imperial and post-war literature. Her red-haired pilot of whom you told me, battle-fatigued out of the RAF, is considered part of the pattern, too, although the author does not link him to wounded Marcus and that's the first thing that would have occurred to me.