document_title: Into the Badlands (TV series)

question_text: into the badlands season 1 episode 4 release date

text: Into the Badlands (TV series)

text: Premise[edit]

text: Opening introduction, narrated by M.K. (Aramis Knight):

text:
“

The wars were so long ago nobody even remembers. Darkness and fear ruled until the time of the barons, seven men and women who forged order out of chaos. People flocked to them for protection. That protection became servitude. They banished guns and trained armies of lethal fighters they called Clippers. This world is built on blood. Nobody is innocent here. Welcome to the Badlands.

”

text: The series is set in a post-apocalyptic world approximately 500 years after a war that left civilization in ruins. Many elements of technology, such as electricity and ground vehicles, have survived the apocalypse but society now shuns guns, leading to a reliance on melee weaponry and cross-bows.

text: In a territory known as the Badlands, the former state of Oklahoma,[7] a feudal society has developed to fill the power vacuum left by the war. Barons control land and monopolies over commodities like opium and fuel, trading amongst themselves to maintain the peace. Each baron is served by a massive workforce of slaves called cogs, as well as a prostitute class called dolls. A baron maintains power through a corps of young men and women called clippers: highly trained and loyal warriors, clippers are forbidden from marrying and having children lest their loyalties be divided. Each clipper force is captained by a regent.

text: Several groups exist outside the strict hierarchy of the barons. Nomads are the most common, mostly lawless homicidal bandits who subsist on stealing from trade convoys between the baronies but some live in organized clans. The River King and his men control water trade in the Badlands and beyond, and is considered a neutral party in the barons' power struggles. An ascetic religious movement called the Totemists is also shown to exist on the fringes of society, living in isolated communities and practicing a form of idol worship. The Widow leads a revolutionary group of anti-feudal fighters from her late husband's barony; although nominally recognized as a baron by her peers, they do not respect her, and the contempt is mutual.

text: Little is known of the world beyond the Badlands, but it is implied that it is far less politically stable and environmentally sound than the Badlands. The mythical utopian city of Azra is believed to exist outside the Badlands but most dismiss it as a legend.

text: Cast and characters[edit]

text: Main[edit]

text:
Daniel Wu as Sunny, regent (head clipper) to the Badlands' most powerful baron, Quinn. Despite being a man of conviction, he is very loyal to Quinn. Very skilled and proficient in various styles and weapons, he is considered to be one of the deadliest clippers in the Badlands. Based on Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.
Orla Brady as Lydia, Quinn's first wife, who is both his fiercest critic and most devoted follower. She partners with The Widow and becomes her Viceroy and takes over Quinn's mansion. She adopts a horse for her Baronial symbol, shown in white on a green banner, and continues to produce poppies.
Sarah Bolger as Jade, Quinn's new wife-to-be, whose beguiling demeanor hides a core of ambition and tenacity which she uses to manipulate others. She later marries her step-son, Ryder, after Quinn's presumed death. (seasons 1–2)[6]
Aramis Knight as M.K., a seemingly average teenage boy who is anything but. Lurking inside him is a dark energy that the Widow wants to harness into a weapon. Based on Tripitaka, or Tang Sanzang.
Emily Beecham as Minerva, better known as The Widow, the Badlands' newest baron; a brilliant martial artist. She has adopted a blue-winged butterfly as her baronial symbol, shown in yellow on a light blue banner. It represents a transformation from insignificance to beauty and power. Her territory produces crude oil.
Oliver Stark as Ryder, Quinn's only son and presumed heir who later takes over as baron after his father's presumed death along with marrying his step-mother, Jade. (seasons 1–2)[6]
Madeleine Mantock as Veil, a doctor who is in a secret relationship with Sunny (seasons 1–2).[6]
Ally Ioannides as Tilda, a teenage assassin well-trained in the martial arts, she is the Widow's adopted daughter and later becomes her regent.
Marton Csokas as Quinn,[8] the Badlands' preeminent baron and a former clipper. His baronial symbol is an armadillo shown in white on a maroon banner. His territory produces poppy flowers, which are harvested for opium. (seasons 1–2)[6]
Nick Frost as Bajie,[9] a schemer with questionable morals who finds himself allied with Sunny. Based on Zhu Bajie (season 2–present)[6]
Babou Ceesay as Pilgrim, a self-described "Son of Azra". He is the leader of the Totemists, worshipers who are with him to recreate Azra in the Badlands. Can control those with the Gift, including Nix, Castor and M.K. (season 3).[10]
Lorraine Toussaint as Cressida, high priestess of Pilgrim and his followers (season 3).[11]
Ella-Rae Smith as Nix, a member of Pilgrim's followers who has the Gift. She is close friends with Castor (season 3).[10]
Sherman Augustus as Nathaniel Moon, a former clipper who fights with honor, looking for his 1,000th Clip. Battled Sonny; after he lost, wanted to be killed but lost his hand instead. The Widow's regent, he is tasked with tracking down Sunny (guest season 2; main season 3).[10]

text: Recurring[edit]

text:
Yohance Myles as Ringo, the tattoo artist of the clippers who inks their kill marks on their bodies. (Season 1).
Benjamin Papac as Bale, a Colt (a Clipper-in-training) and a seemingly benevolent boy who befriends M.K. (Season 1).
Mike Seal as Petri, one of Quinn's clippers. (Season 1)
Stephen Lang as Waldo, a paraplegic former regent serving under Quinn (Season 1) and the Widow (season 2).
Teressa Liane as Angelica, a prostitute/spy loyal to The Widow. (Season 1).
Ellen Hollman as Zypher, a regent of Baron Jacobee who has a history with Sunny. (Season 1).
Edi Gathegi as Baron Jacobee, who has an alliance with Quinn. His baronial colors are a pattern of blue and green plaid. (Season 1).
Lance E. Nichols as the River King, an importer and exporter of goods and cogs (indentured servants) up and down the river through the Badlands. (Season 2–3)
Lance Henriksen as Penrith, Lydia's father and the leader of a Totemist religious commune. (Seasons 1–2).
Cung Le as Cyan, head Abbott who journeys with his fellow Abbotts, Ramona and Dury, searching for those who have abilities. (Season 2).
Eve Connolly as Ava, an fighting instructor who works with M.K. (Season 2).
Stephen Walters as the Engineer, boss of the pickers (miners) in the Bordeaux Mines. (Season 2).
Chipo Chung as the Master, leader of the Abbott who trains M.K., teaching him how to control his abilities (Season 2–present).
Maddison Jaizani as Odessa, a former Doll who becomes one of The Widow's Butterflies, and later is Tilda's lover. (Season 2–present).
Eleanor Matsuura as Baron Juliet Chau, who wants Quinn dead. She has adopted a fox as her baronial symbol, shown in black on a cream colored banner. Her baronial color is mostly white. (Season 2–present).
Alan Wai as Baron Hassan, who voted against The Widow's barony at the conclave. For his baronial symbol, he adopted a peacock shown in yellow gold on a purple banner. His territory produces silk. (Season 2).
Jonathan Ryan as Baron Broadmore, who also voted to exile The Widow during the conclave. His baronial symbol is two narwhals with their tusks crossed shown in white on a navy blue banner. (Season 2).
Ivo Canelas as Baron Rojas, who voted against The Widow's exile at the conclave. For his baronial symbol, he adopted a grasshopper shown in green on a black banner. (Season 2).
Dean-Charles Chapman as Castor, a member of Pilgrim's followers who has the Gift. Is friends with Nix. (Season 3).[10]
Lewis Tan as Gaius Chau, brother of Juliet Chau who has childhood history with Minerva. (Season 3).[10]
Wayne Gordon as Otto, a regent for Baron Chau. (Season 3).
Sophia Di Martino as Lily, a smuggler and Bajie's ex-wife. (Season 3).
Tamsin Topolski as Wren, a former Butterfly of The Widow's army who, after losing her leg, takes charge of other turncoats wanting to end the war between The Widow and Chau. (Season 3).
George Sear as Arthur, a former Bowler of The Widow's soldiers who takes sides with Wren and the turncoats. (Season 3).

text: Episodes[edit]

text: Series overview[edit]

text: SeasonEpisodesOriginally airedFirst airedLast aired16November 15, 2015 (2015-11-15)December 20, 2015 (2015-12-20)210March 19, 2017 (2017-03-19)May 21, 2017 (2017-05-21)316[12]April 22, 2018 (2018-04-22)TBA

text: Season 1 (2015)[edit]

text:
No.overallNo. inseasonTitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateU.S. viewers(millions)11"The Fort"David DobkinAlfred Gough & Miles MillarNovember 15, 2015 (2015-11-15)6.39[13]
Regent Sunny, a highly-skilled fighter and the deadliest "Head Clipper" for Baron Quinn battles the Nomads to rescue a mysterious boy named M.K. who harbors a dark secret about his past. But when he brings him back to The Fort to train as a "Colt", a Clipper-in-training, things quickly get out of hand with another trainee. When first blood is drawn, M.K. loses control of himself as if something takes over his body, making the boy valuable to an opposing baron, The Widow. Meanwhile, Sunny discovers M.K.'s pendant has the same image as the one on his childhood compass of a place called Azra, the boy's home. In order to seek out the truth about his own past, Sunny wants to know more of this city beyond the Badlands, and must find a way out, especially now that his lover Veil is illegally pregnant with his child.
22"Fist Like a Bullet"David DobkinAlfred Gough & Miles MillarNovember 22, 2015 (2015-11-22)4.83[14]
After wandering into The Widow's territory, M.K. meets the Widow's daughter Tilda, whom he follows for refuge in her mother's mansion. But it turns out to be a dangerous place since she wants to use his dark power to overthrow the other barons. Meanwhile, after Quinn's headaches are diagnosed by his long-time doctor as a tumor, he doesn't have long to live. He wants to keep the news a secret, so he orders Sunny to "clip" the doctor and his wife, Veil's parents, who know about their unborn baby. However, Sunny refuses and Quinn has to murder them himself, and gives him a second chance to test his loyalty. Later, when Sunny and Ryder are attacked by The Widow's nomads, M.K. saves Sunny's life and agrees to show him the way out of the Badlands. But Sunny has a condition; he will bring M.K. back to The Fort for training so he can be strong enough to smuggle Veil and the baby out.
33"White Stork Spreads Wings"David DobkinAlfred Gough & Miles Millar & Justine Juel GillmerNovember 29, 2015 (2015-11-29)5.17[15]
Quinn seeks retribution against The Widow and pays the price with losing many Clippers in his surprise attack. M.K. breaks away from the Colts to steal the book about Azra in The Widow's study, where Tilda sees him. Sunny begins to train M.K., but he must first learn discipline, especially when he underestimates Waldo during their fight because Waldo uses a wheelchair. As Ryder's life slowly fades, Jade desperately seeks help from Veil who reluctantly yet successfully treats him. But it results in Quinn knowing about her and Sunny's relationship. In order for Quinn to form an alliance with Jacobee, the one baron who doesn't hate him as much, Sunny must reunite with Zypher, Jacobee's regent to arrange a meeting. M.K. brings the book to Veil to be translated, but it's in a language she doesn't recognize. As M.K. hides, Veil is interrupted by Quinn who wants her to save him from his deadly illness.
44"Two Tigers Subdue Dragons"Guy FerlandAlfred Gough & Miles Millar & Michael Jones-MoralesDecember 6, 2015 (2015-12-06)2.42[16]
Sunny has to figure out how to control M.K.'s power, especially when he gets knocked out by a single punch. Jade prepares for her wedding, and taking Lydia's advice, she stops her relationship with Ryder, who feels broken and betrayed. Sunny finds out Veil has been helping M.K. translate the Azra book and treating Quinn for his tumor. Later, Quinn sets a parlay with Baron Jacobee to help him defeat The Widow after she beheads one of his Clippers. Both barons meet in the City of the Dead at Cross Bend where problems arise. M.K. spies a disguised Tilda and gives pursuit and they fight. Tilda cuts him, unleashing his darkness that only she can stop. Ryder is enlisted by Zypher who is secretly working for The Widow to join their cause to start a war. Waldo grants Sunny an audience with the River King, importer of goods and cogs, to reserve a passage out of the Badlands. However, the River King demands M.K.'s head as payment due to M.K. having previously killed some of his Cogs.
55"Snake Creeps Down"Guy FerlandAlfred Gough & Miles Millar & Justin DobleDecember 13, 2015 (2015-12-13)2.21[17]
Sunny finds a direction when he uses his broken compass in the Azra book's cutout. After the poppy fields are abandoned, Quinn has a migraine and puts Jade in charge to train Clippers how to harvest. In order to look for "the boy at the Fort", The Widow takes in Quinn's cogs, promising them freedom in return for loyalty. Waldo tells Ryder to take M.K.'s pendant to Ryder's grandfather Penrith, a preacher, who says Azra is just a made-up story. Veil asks Quinn if he killed her parents and says it was Sunny's blade that ended their lives, not his. When Sunny brings Petri and his Colt, Bale, to track The Widow and her Butterflies, Tilda warns M.K. every time he is cut, his life force gets weaker, and gets captured. A fight ensues between her mother and Sunny, while Bale, wanting to make his first kill, fights Tilda, but meets a deadly end when M.K. cuts himself to save her.
66"Hand of Five Poisons"Guy FerlandAlfred Gough & Miles Millar & Michael R. PerryDecember 20, 2015 (2015-12-20)2.16[18]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) After his failure to finish off The Widow, Quinn suspects that Sunny is a traitor and imprisons him. Meanwhile, Jade frames Lydia for trying to poison her, resulting in Quinn exiling her. With no other choice, Lydia returns to Penrith and rejoins her father's congregation. Later, Tilda kidnaps Veil, asking her to treat The Widow's wounds. Veil warns Tilda that her mother does not truly love her. She leaves two bottles of poison and the tincture, making it Tilda's choice whether to kill her or not. Instead, Tilda confronts The Widow who insists she's trying to save M.K. and explains she was once special like him. When M.K. escapes, Quinn convinces him to join his ranks in return for sparing Tilda and Sunny's lives; he agrees. Sunny is freed by Waldo, who reveals himself as the true traitor, and urges him to leave the Badlands, but he goes in search of M.K. At the Dollhouse, Quinn is ambushed by Ryder who teamed up with Jacobee and Zypher. Quinn triggers M.K.'s abilities and he quickly disposes of them all. Sunny shows up, impales Quinn with his sword, and attempts to subdue M.K. However, three Abbotts arrive and easily defeat them, revealing they have the same abilities as M.K., and take him away. In order to secure transportation out of the Badlands, Sunny had presented Bale's head to the River King, to pass off as M.K.'s. But the River King finds out and knows Sunny tried to cheat him. The River King captures him, intending to sell Sunny to the highest bidder.

text: Season 2 (2017)[edit]

text:
No.overallNo. inseasonTitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateU.S. viewers(millions)71"Tiger Pushes Mountain"Nick CopusAlfred Gough & Miles MillarMarch 19, 2017 (2017-03-19)3.44[19]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Six months later, Sunny, now a "Picker", a miner used for slave labor, excavates coal in the Bordeaux Mines far from the Badlands. He befriends Bajie, a smuggler who is shackled to him. After watching an arena fight in which under-performing Pickers are executed for not making their quota, Sunny plans to escape. Bajie acquires a map and wants to go with him. When Sunny refuses, Bajie betrays his true identity to the mine boss, The Engineer. Meanwhile, M.K. undergoes training from the Abbotts under the tutelage of Ava. Later, M.K. meets The Master, who promises his freedom if he can learn to control his abilities, and  oversees his training. In the Badlands, Ryder, who as Baron following his father's presumed death controls Quinn, Jacobee, and The Widow's territories, alongside his love, Jade. During an inspection of the oil fields, The Widow and Tilda, now a regent, return. In a surprise attack they reclaim them, kill most of Ryder's Clippers and force him to retreat. They preside over a growing army of former Cogs and Dolls, promising to end the Badlands feudal system and replace it with a democratic society. Tilda recruits Odessa, a former doll, and has the clippers who abused the dolls killed. While stationed in an abandoned train station, Veil gives birth to a boy and is in the company of Quinn, who survived his impalement.
82"Force of Eagle's Claw"Nick CopusMatt LambertMarch 26, 2017 (2017-03-26)3.41[20]
After Bajie betrays Sunny, The Engineer decides he doesn't like a "rat" for a Picker so he sends them to the fighting pit to battle his champion Mouse. Fortunately, the arena is unguarded. They defeat their foe, make it to the exit and escape through the mine's ventilation system. They find themselves in the Outlying Territories with a wall separating them from the Badlands. Meanwhile, Tilda learns how to be a proper Regent from Waldo who is working for The Widow. Lydia is living with Penrith and his Totemists. All is peaceful until Nomads interrupt a wedding, looking for goods. Lydia takes it upon herself to save the religious group by killing all the bandits herself, resulting in her father's disapproval due to his non-violent beliefs. She is once again cast out and returns to Ryder, who doesn't receive her kindly. Also, The Master sends M.K. to her room of mirrors in order to conquer his inner demon; himself. Later, while hiding out in the abandoned West Avalon transit station, Quinn performs a bloody baptism on Veil's son, Henry, who he proclaims is the Badlands newest heir.
93"Red Sun, Silver Moon"Toa FraserMichael TaylorApril 2, 2017 (2017-04-02)3.11[21]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) While wandering the Outlying Territories, Sunny and Bajie find a bridge that leads into the Badlands, but it is guarded by a stranger and they've been followed by bounty hunters. The stranger lends them a helping hand defeating the bounty hunters and gives them shelter. They learn that he's the legendary Clipper Regent Nathaniel Moon, "Silver Moon" who, like Sunny, left the Badlands to live a violence-free life. After he fell in love with a warlord's daughter, he started a family, but they were murdered. Now he hunts fugitives, returning to his violent ways. He tries to convince Sunny that men like them never change. Meanwhile, The Widow asks Waldo to be her Second at the Baron conclave instead of Tilda, but she is in charge if she doesn't return. Veil lies to Quinn about his prognoses by switching out his x-rays with healthy ones. M.K. discovers that the Abbotts are up to something when his friend Tate is experimented on, draining his abilities. Later Silver Moon, still searching for his 1,000th kill mark, sees Sunny as a worthy opponent. He challenges Sunny to a fight to the death or to put him out of his misery by ending his life. Sunny continues on his quest to find his family and does not want to be his executioner; Bajie comes to his aid.
104"Palm of the Iron Fox"Toa FraserDaniel C. ConnollyApril 9, 2017 (2017-04-09)1.57[22]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Quinn puts his plan in motion to start anew and sets off with his Clippers. Meanwhile before the conclave voting ceremony, The Widow tries to get Baron Chau on her side and thinks about her condition of pledging not to shelter any more runaway Cogs at her Sanctuary. Later, M.K. takes one of The Master's opium-infused origami and returns to the room of mirrors, this time to find out what happened to his mother, but learns that her blood is on his hands. When Quinn is off on his mission, Veil, trapped at the transit station with lone Clipper Edgar, tries to escape with Henry in her arms by drugging him, however he blocks her only way out. During the conclave, the five remaining Barons vote The Widow in breach of the Foundation Treaty, stripped of her baron title, and her lands and privileges are revoked. They give her 48 hours to vacate the Badlands, but she has no intention of giving it up and a baronial showdown is about to begin. Just then, Quinn makes a dramatic entrance first and goes after Ryder, killing his son in the middle of his hedge maze. In the end, Tilda shows up at the melee and helps Waldo and her mother in their fight for a Cog-free world.
115"Monkey Leaps Through Mist"Paco CabezasLaToya MorganApril 16, 2017 (2017-04-16)1.42[23]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) With Ryder dead, the other surviving Barons have fled, going to ground. Jade, the only successor, is sworn in as Baron by her Regent, Merrick, and declares war. She then turns to Lydia for help in finding Quinn. However, Lydia has one condition; she gets to kill Quinn herself. Meanwhile, Bajie takes Sunny to Nos, the Commandant of the Mechs, or metal traders, to trade Silver Moon's sword for a shortcut back into the Badlands. Sunny learns from the leader that Quinn's still alive. During their overnight stay, a Doll named Portia visits Sunny asking him to kill Nos so her young daughter Amelia will not lead a life of prostitution. He refuses at first, but after seeing Portia's face mutilated and her stabbed, he and Bajie steal their ride, bringing mother and daughter with them. Also, while training, M.K. escapes the Abbotts and disguises himself with clothes from a corpse that was hanged nearby. Later, The Widow ignores Waldo's advice, to either align with the other Barons who tried to kill her or lose everything she built, instead aligning herself with Quinn. Lydia and the Clippers seek out Quinn, but the bunker doors are booby trapped, and she loses most of her men. In the commotion, Veil finds her way out of the transit station and flees from Quinn, who is having hallucinations of his dead son.
126"Leopard Stalks in Snow"Paco CabezasMatt LambertApril 23, 2017 (2017-04-23)1.31[24]
This episode's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) In the aftermath of the transit station explosion, Lydia loses all her men and is captured by Quinn who offers her a chance to avenge their son with a dagger to his heart. Unlike Ryder, she doesn't hesitate, but Quinn stops her hand from the killing blow, then has an intimate moment. Meanwhile, after their escape from the Mechs; Bajie and Sunny go to Portia's healer friend, located in a Gasper addicts opium den. Veil finds temporary solace at the Widow's Sanctuary, but the Widow makes an unholy alliance with Quinn and hands her and baby Henry over to him. Also, Tilda gets closer to Odessa by telling her why she calls Minerva "mother" and they share an intimate moment witnessed by Waldo. Later, Ava finds M.K., who seemed to have lost his power after a skirmish with a Nomad, leaving him bloody. They make camp at an Old World hotel left abandoned during Christmas 2024. Sunny and M.K. reunite, but he's followed by the three Abbotts; Cyan, Ramona, and Dury, seeking out M.K's darkness with an Azraian device. A melee ensues and they're quickly defeated until Bajie shows up, revealing his secret of being an Abbott in another life. Ava dies from her injuries after saving M.K. while Sunny suddenly collapses from a mysterious blow to the chest.
137"Black Heart, White Mountain"Stephen FungMichael TaylorApril 30, 2017 (2017-04-30)1.42[25]
After a dying Cyan attacked him with the hand of the Five Poisons, a poisoned and comatose Sunny is trapped in a nightmare in which he must confront his inner demons. In the dream, he is living a simple life as a farmer with Veil and Henry who has grown into a boy. Things quickly escalate as the poison seeps through his body, causing all the victims he clipped, including a girl named Artemis, to kill him. Bajie and M.K. infiltrate the Abbott monastery to gather medical supplies and special needles in order to revive Sunny, along with Sunny's Azra compass that Bajie secretly steals. Later, Bajie explains his departure from the monastery. He had a loving relationship with his novice Flea, who had dark abilities similar to M.K. and wishes to find her. Meanwhile, Quinn and the Widow assault Jade's palace in order to exile her from the Badlands.
148"Sting of the Scorpion's Tail"Stephen FungLaToya MorganMay 7, 2017 (2017-05-07)1.29[26]
Quinn and the Widow prove their alliance by presenting their gifts: Baron Hassan and Baron Broadmore's heads. Meanwhile, Bajie gets Sunny and M.K. out of the Outlying Territories and through the wall into the Badlands. But it comes at a price when they're captured by Baron Chau's Clippers. However, Sunny devises a plan to get them out by proposing to Chau he knows how to lure The Widow out. He becomes Chau's Regent, slips Bajie the cell key to his freedom, and delivers M.K. to The Widow in order to find Quinn's hideout. Sunny and The Widow's reunion is a bloody one as they work together, alongside M.K. and Tilda, fighting the Clippers. Later, Veil is forced to marry Quinn so he can help raise Henry, grooming him as his heir to the baroncy. Their consummation is interrupted by a report that Sunny is alive, and has joined forces  with the Widow and is coming to find Quinn.
159"Nightingale Sings No More"Paco CabezasJustin Britt-GibsonMay 14, 2017 (2017-05-14)1.56[27]
Twenty years ago, Bajie, an Abbott is tasked with training a new novice who, due to her powerful "Gift", is brought to the monastery in a large chest. She breaks free and Bajie has to subdue her, and because of her small size, he nicknames her Flea. However, her name is Minerva and she carries the book of Azra that's been in her family for generations. Back to the present, Sunny aligns with the Widow who offers him and M.K., now without his abilities, sanctuary. The Widow plans to attack Quinn's bunker, but Quinn sends his young Clipper Gabriel strapped with a suicide bomb to deliver Sunny a message about Veil, and learns that the Widow traded her to Quinn. In the chaos of the explosion, Sunny escapes and runs into Bajie, telling him to get M.K. out and meet him at the bunker. Bajie reunites with Minerva, but it's not the reunion he wanted, as he and M.K. are captured trying to steal the Azra book. Later, Tilda confronts the Widow about how she's become like the rest of the barons: power-hungry and sacrificing innocent lives. The two fight, and Tilda is defeated.
1610"Wolf's Breath, Dragon Fire"Paco CabezasAlfred Gough, Miles Millar & Matt LambertMay 21, 2017 (2017-05-21)1.37[28]
While M.K. remains in the Widow's clutches forcing him to get his Gift back, Odessa frees Bajie and a crippled Tilda from captivity with the aid of Waldo. Bajie helps Sunny in his assault on Quinn's bunker.  During the assault, Bajie is wounded by one of Quinn's lieutenants before disappearing, and Lydia is saved from execution. Meanwhile, Sunny is reunited with Veil and fights a final battle with Quinn. Badly wounded, Quinn grabs Veil and tries to take her hostage and gives him an ultimatum; either Sunny gives him Henry or he will kill Veil. Refusing to let Quinn have the upper hand, Veil fatally impales both herself and Quinn with his own sai. With her dying breath, Veil implores Sunny to raise their son to be good. Later, an injured Bajie rides Sunny's motorcycle to a derelict communications tower and reactivates it with the Azra compass, sending out a Morse code before collapsing from his stab wound.

text: Season 3 (2018)[edit]

text:
No.overallNo. inseasonTitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateU.S. viewers(millions)171"Enter the Phoenix"Paco CabezasMatt LambertApril 22, 2018 (2018-04-22)1.35[29]
It's been six months since Sunny returned to the Badlands, which is now ravaged by a civil war between the only two barons left: The Widow and Chau. He reunites with Bajie to seek a cure for his infant son Henry, who has The Gift. Tilda, known as the "Iron Rabbit", and her band of thieves are stealing from The Widow and protecting Lydia in a Totemist camp. Meanwhile, M.K. is being held captive by The Widow who is trying to help him get back his power. She also recuits Moon who is in hiding after his fight with Sunny left him with one hand. Later, a new threat emerges.
182"Moon Rises, Raven Seeks"Paco GonzalezMatt LambertApril 29, 2018 (2018-04-29)1.27[30]
After receiving Bajie's signal, Pilgrim, the son of Azra, along with his Acolytes travel a long way in search for a new kingdom in the Badlands. They find one in a ruined castle on an island, once a natural history museum. Moon joins The Widow as her Regent. He's tasked with finding Bajie, who is vital in the war effort. Sunny learns he passed The Gift to Henry. He and Bajie seek help from Lydia who tell them about Ankara, the Mad Witch who processes knowledge about The Dark Ones. Wanting answers, they set out north to Vulture's Peak where she can be found. Later, The Widow struggles to control M.K. who tries to kill himself with opium. She wants the Iron Rabbit's head, unbeknownst the thief is Tilda.
193"Leopard Snares Rabbit"Toa FraserMichael TaylorMay 6, 2018 (2018-05-06)0.97[31]
On orders to capture the Iron Rabbit, Moon raids Tilda's refugee camp and takes Odessa to lure her out. Lydia decides to play both sides and partners with The Widow as her Viceroy and she takes over Quinn's mansion. Disguised as The Widow's Clippers, Sunny and Bajie make their way to the frontlines and leave Henry with a healer while they find a way out of the war zone for a cure. Tilda confronts her mother and makes a deal that she'll come back for M.K.'s freedom. M.K. gets his Gift back.
204"Blind Cannibal Assassins"Toa FraserMichael TaylorMay 13, 2018 (2018-05-13)1.20[32]
While traveling through the Wasteland, Sunny and Bajie face-off against a band of blind cannibals who were once renegade Clippers tracked down and blinded by Quinn's forces, including Sunny when he was a Colt. They join forces with Moon who was also captured by the assassins, and his honor is satisfied after sparing Henry a father. Baron Chau enlists her imprisoned brother, Gaius to clip Pilgrim who is recruiting Cogs from her territory, while The Widow and Lydia try to befriend Pilgrim, and save his life in the process during Chau's attack. Later, M.K. is on the run, deciding he must find Sunny and kill him, believing he murdered his mother.
215"Carry Tiger to Mountain"James MarshallLaToya MorganMay 20, 2018 (2018-05-20)1.08[33]
Sunny and Bajie reach Vulture's Peak and seeks help from Ankara, a reclusive witch, who temporally heals Henry's darkness. She tells Sunny someone powerful dispelled his Gift as a child, and in doing so, made him a Catalyst, from where the dark gift flows through him. She also declared that Sunny may be the most powerful of them all.  After Nix saves him in the forest, M.K. meets Pilgrim, who wants to use his powers for his cause in ushering in a new era of blood and chaos in the name of Azra. The Widow confronts Gaius, Chau's brother and a ghost from her past from when she served his father as Chau's Cog. He agrees to help fight his sister's Clippers who, along with Castor, ransacked Tilda's refugee camp.
226"Black Wind Howls"James MarshallEvan Endicott & Josh StoddardJune 3, 2018 (2018-06-03)0.92[34]
While making their way through an unsavory part of the Badlands full of pirates and thieves, Sunny and Bajie asks a favor from Lily,  Bajie's ex-wife turned smuggler. With her boat, she decides to help them find the new Azra. However, Sunny has visions of himself as a boy on board Lily's boat which once belonged to the River King. And its not long he comes seeking out their bounties. Later, Tilda forms an alliance with her mother after Chau took some refugees. The two meet up with Pilgrim and The Widow brings an injured Castor who was her captive, not wanting to break the peace with him. But Pilgrim has M.K. on his side and kills Castor.
237"Dragonfly's Last Dance"Paco CabezasLaToya MorganJune 10, 2018 (2018-06-10)1.06[35]
Sunny and Bajie work with the River King to secure passage to Pilgrim's Fortress. However, Sunny learns that as a child he was on a boat that was attacked by the Black Lotus, a group of fearsome warriors looking for him. Sunny seeks out Captain Udo, the last survivor who tells him more about the massacre and that he had a sister who protected him. The Widow faces a mutiny from her Butterflies and Bowlers who are sick losing life and limb from the war with Baron Chau. Under the leadership of Wren, a former fighter, they hold her and Gaius captive. However, Lydia negotiates an armistice with the turncoats and flees to Moon and Tilda to rescue them. With the River King dead, Lily takes over to become the River Queen.
248"Leopard Catches Cloud"Paco CabezasMatt LambertJune 17, 2018 (2018-06-17)0.89[36]
Sunny and Bajie arrive at Pilgrim's Fortress, but they do not receive a warm welcome. Sunny fights an angry M.K. who makes him remember he killed his mother as a Clipper. After surviving the melee, Sunny meets Pilgrim and learns that his real name is Sanzo and in order to cure his son, they must open the Meridian Chamber, an ancient underground vault from the Old World Pilgrim's acolytes recently unearthed. Bajie discovers they want to make an army of Dark Ones for a new Azra. But Sunny has no choice as long as Henry is cured. Pilgrim tells Sunny that Sunny is the key and Pilgrim is the focus to cure Henry and transfers Henry's gift to himself. Later, The Widow, Gaius and Tilda storm White Bone, Chau's mansion while Moon battles her troops and Lydia holds the line.

text: Episode eleven is written by Stephanie Hicks & Matt Lambert, and directed by Tricia Brock.[37]

text: Production[edit]

text: Described as a "genre-bending martial arts series".  AMC ordered 6 one-hour-long episodes of the action-drama developed by AMC Studios for a premiere in late 2015.[38] Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park composed the title theme.[39] Executive producer Stephen Fung also serves as the series' action director alongside veteran Hong Kong choreographer, Ku Huen-chiu.[40]

text: Broadcast[edit]

text: Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on November 17, 2015, on Showcase.[41] In Germany, Austria, Italy, and the UK, the series is available through Amazon Prime Instant Video with each episode accessible the day after the U.S. air date.[42] BBC America began airing double episodes on August 20, 2016, at 10pm ET.[43]

text: Home media[edit]

text:
Complete Season

DVD/Blu-ray Release dates

Additional info

Region 1/A

Region 2/B

Region 4/C

1

November 8, 2016[44]

n/a

n/a

The Blu-ray/DVD box-sets include featurettes, making of the fight scenes, the characters of the series, and digital comic.

2

March 13, 2018[45]

n/a

n/a

Deleted scenes.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: The first season received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 54% approval rating with an average rating of 4.72/10 based on 39 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Into the Badlands is loaded with off-kilter potential that's left largely unfulfilled -- although its well-choreographed action sequences should satisfy martial arts fans."[46] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 54 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[47]

text: The second season received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 7.53/10 based on 5 reviews.[48]

text: Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter gave a generally positive review and wrote, "AMC finds a bloody, fun and entertaining non-zombie counterpart to The Walking Dead and turns Sundays into an escapist red zone."[49] Maureen Ryan of Variety wrote, "The action scenes scattered throughout Into the Badlands are not just stirringly presented, they represent a test passed with flying, and bloody, colors. This efficient AMC series is an homage to classic Samurai films and kinetic action fare churned out by Hong Kong maestros of furious fists, and if the TV drama had failed to meet the standards set by the sturdiest examples of those genres, it would have seemed superfluous at best. Fortunately, star Daniel Wu is more than up to the task of occupying the center of this streamlined story of vengeance, tyranny and roundhouse kicks."[50]

text: Ratings[edit]

text: Season 1 (2015)[edit]

text:
No.

Title

Air date
Rating(18–49)
Viewers(millions)
DVR(18–49)
DVR viewers(millions)
Total(18–49)
Total viewers(millions)

1

"The Fort"

November 15, 2015
3.2
6.39[13]
0.8
1.83
4.0
8.22† [51]

2

"Fist Like a Bullet"

November 22, 2015
2.3
4.83[14]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

3

"White Stork Spreads Wings"

November 29, 2015
2.5
5.17[15]
0.7
1.52
3.2
6.69† [52]

4

"Two Tigers Subdue Dragons"

December 6, 2015
1.1
2.42[16]
0.6
N/A
1.7† [53]
N/A

5

"Snake Creeps Down"

December 13, 2015
1.0
2.21[17]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

6

"Hand of Five Poisons"

December 20, 2015
1.0
2.16[18]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

text: †  Live +7 ratings were not available, so Live +3 ratings have been used instead.

text: Season 2 (2017)[edit]

text:
No.

Title

Air date
Rating(18–49)
Viewers(millions)
DVR(18–49)
DVR viewers(millions)
Total(18–49)
Total viewers(millions)

1

"Tiger Pushes Mountain"

March 19, 2017
1.4
3.44[19]
0.6
1.28
2.0
4.71[54]

2

"Force of Eagle's Claw"

March 26, 2017
1.5
3.41[20]
N/A
1.23
N/A
4.64[55]

3

"Red Sun, Silver Moon"

April 2, 2017
1.4
3.11[21]
0.6
1.38
2.0
4.50[56]

4

"Palm of the Iron Fox"

April 9, 2017
0.6
1.57[22]
0.5
1.12
1.1
2.69[57]

5

"Monkey Leaps Through Mist"

April 16, 2017
0.5
1.42[23]
0.6
1.25
1.1
2.67[58]

6

"Leopard Stalks in Snow"

April 23, 2017
0.5
1.31[24]
0.5
1.22
1.0
2.53[59]

7

"Black Heart, White Mountain"

April 30, 2017
0.5
1.42[25]
0.4
N/A
0.9†[60]
N/A

8

"Sting of the Scorpion's Tail"

May 7, 2017
0.5
1.29[26]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

9

"Nightingale Sings No More"

May 14, 2017
0.6
1.56[27]
0.4
1.15
1.0
2.71[61]

10

"Wolf's Breath, Dragon Fire"

May 21, 2017
0.5
1.37[28]
0.4
1.07
0.9
2.44[62]

text: Season 3 (2018)[edit]

text:
No.

Title

Air date
Rating(18–49)
Viewers(millions)
DVR(18–49)
DVR viewers(millions)
Total(18–49)
Total viewers(millions)

1

"Enter the Phoenix"

April 22, 2018
0.5
1.35[29]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

2

"Moon Rises, Raven Seeks"

April 29, 2018
0.4
1.27[30]
0.3
N/A
0.7[63]
N/A

3

"Leopard Snares Rabbit"

May 6, 2018
0.3
0.97[31]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

4

"Blind Cannibal Assassins"

May 13, 2018
0.4
1.20[32]
0.3
0.82
0.7
2.02[64]

5

"Carry Tiger to Mountain"

May 20, 2018
0.4
1.08[33]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

6

"Black Wind Howls"

June 3, 2018
0.3
0.92[34]
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A

7

"Dragonfly's Last Dance"

June 10, 2018
0.3
1.06[35]
0.4
0.87
0.7
1.93[65]

8

"Leopard Catches Cloud"

June 17, 2018
0.3
0.89[36]
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD

text: Accolades[edit]

text:
Year

Award

Category

Recipient(s) and nominee(s)

Result

Ref.

2018

Saturn Awards

Best Action-Thriller Television Series

Into the Badlands

Nominated

[66]


document_title: Beowulf

question_text: where did the battle between beowulf and grendel take place

question_tokens: where did the battle between beowulf and grendel take place

root

text: Beowulf

text: Historical background[edit]

text: The events in the poem take place over most of the sixth century, after the Anglo-Saxons had started migrating to England and before the beginning of the seventh century, a time when the Anglo-Saxons were either newly arrived or were still in close contact with their Germanic kinsmen in Northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. The poem may have been brought to England by people of Geatish origins.[7] Many suggest that Beowulf was first composed in the 7th century at Rendlesham in East Anglia, that the Sutton Hoo ship-burial also shows close connections with Scandinavia, and that the East Anglian royal dynasty, the Wuffingas, may have been descendants of the Geatish Wulfings.[8][9] Others have associated this poem with the court of King Alfred the Great or with the court of King Cnut the Great.[10]

tag: p

text: The poem deals with legends, was composed for entertainment, and does not separate between fictional elements and historic events, such as the raid by King Hygelac into Frisia. Though Beowulf himself is not mentioned in any other Anglo-Saxon manuscript,[12] scholars generally agree that many of the other figures referred to in Beowulf also appear in Scandinavian sources. (Specific works are designated in the following section).[13] This concerns not only individuals (e.g., Healfdene, Hroðgar, Halga, Hroðulf, Eadgils and Ohthere), but also clans (e.g., Scyldings, Scylfings and Wulfings) and certain events (e.g., the Battle on the Ice of Lake Vänern).

text: In Denmark, recent archaeological excavations at Lejre, where Scandinavian tradition located the seat of the Scyldings, i.e., Heorot, have revealed that a hall was built in the mid-6th century, exactly the time period of Beowulf.[14] Three halls, each about 50 metres (160 ft) long, were found during the excavation.[14]

text: The majority view appears to be that people such as King Hroðgar and the Scyldings in Beowulf are based on historical people from 6th-century Scandinavia.[15] Like the Finnesburg Fragment and several shorter surviving poems, Beowulf has consequently been used as a source of information about Scandinavian figures such as Eadgils and Hygelac, and about continental Germanic figures such as Offa, king of the continental Angles.

text: 19th-century archaeological evidence may confirm elements of the Beowulf story. Eadgils was buried at Uppsala according to Snorri Sturluson. When the western mound (to the left in the photo) was excavated in 1874, the finds showed that a powerful man was buried in a large barrow, c. 575, on a bear skin with two dogs and rich grave offerings. The eastern mound was excavated in 1854, and contained the remains of a woman, or a woman and a young man. The middle barrow has not been excavated.[16][11]

text: Summary[edit]

text: The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair.

text: Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his thegns or servants, but they do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon to its lair at Earnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf, whose name means "remnant of valour",[a] dares to join him. Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded in the struggle. He is cremated and a burial mound by the sea is erected in his honour.

text: Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poem also begins in medias res or simply, "in the middle of things," which is a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although the poem begins with Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been an ongoing event. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages is spoken of, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, and deeds of valour. The warriors form a kind of brotherhood linked by loyalty to their lord. What is unique about "Beowulf" is that the poem actually begins and ends with a funeral. At the beginning of the poem, the king, hero, Shield Shiefson dies (26–45) and there is a huge funeral for him. At the end of the poem when Beowulf dies, there is also a massive funeral for Beowulf (3140–3170).

text: First battle: Grendel[edit]

text: Beowulf begins with the story of Hrothgar, who constructed the great hall Heorot for himself and his warriors. In it, he, his wife Wealhtheow, and his warriors spend their time singing and celebrating. Grendel, a troll-like monster said to be descended from the biblical Cain, is pained by the sounds of joy.[19] Grendel attacks the hall and kills and devours many of Hrothgar's warriors while they sleep. Hrothgar and his people, helpless against Grendel, abandon Heorot.

text: Beowulf, a young warrior from Geatland, hears of Hrothgar's troubles and with his king's permission leaves his homeland to assist Hrothgar.[20]

text: Beowulf and his men spend the night in Heorot. Beowulf refuses to use any weapon because he holds himself to be the equal of Grendel.[21] When Grendel enters the hall, Beowulf, who has been feigning sleep, leaps up to clench Grendel's hand.[22] Grendel and Beowulf battle each other violently.[23] Beowulf's retainers draw their swords and rush to his aid, but their blades cannot pierce Grendel's skin.[24] Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body at the shoulder and Grendel runs to his home in the marshes where he dies.[25] Beowulf displays "the whole of Grendel's shoulder and arm, his awesome grasp" for all to see at Heorot. This display would fuel Grendel's mother's anger in revenge.[26]

text: Second battle: Grendel's mother[edit]

text: The next night, after celebrating Grendel's defeat, Hrothgar and his men sleep in Heorot. Grendel's mother, angry that her son has been killed, sets out to get revenge. "Beowulf was elsewhere. Earlier, after the award of treasure, The Geat had been given another lodging"; his assistance would be absent in this battle.[27] Grendel's mother violently kills Æschere, who is Hrothgar's most loyal fighter, and escapes.

text: Hrothgar, Beowulf, and their men track Grendel's mother to her lair under a lake. Unferth, a warrior who had doubted him and wishes to make amends, presents Beowulf with his sword Hrunting. After stipulating a number of conditions to Hrothgar in case of his death (including the taking in of his kinsmen and the inheritance by Unferth of Beowulf's estate), Beowulf jumps into the lake, at the bottom of which he finds a cavern containing Grendel's body and the remains of men that the two have killed. Grendel's mother and Beowulf engage in fierce combat.

text: At first, Grendel's mother appears to prevail. Beowulf, finding that Hrunting cannot harm his foe, puts it aside in fury. Beowulf is again saved from his opponent's attack by his armour. Beowulf takes another sword from Grendel's mother and slices her head off with it. Travelling further into Grendel's mother's lair, Beowulf discovers Grendel's corpse and severs his head. The blade of Beowulf's sword touches Grendel's toxic blood, and instantly dissolves so that only the hilt remains. Beowulf swims back up to the rim of the pond where his men wait in growing despair.  Carrying the hilt of the sword and Grendel's head, he presents them to Hrothgar upon his return to Heorot.  Hrothgar gives Beowulf many gifts, including the sword Nægling, his family's heirloom. The events prompt a long reflection by the king, sometimes referred to as "Hrothgar's sermon", in which he urges Beowulf to be wary of pride and to reward his thegns.[28]

text: Third battle: The dragon[edit]

text: Beowulf returns home and eventually becomes king of his own people. One day, fifty years after Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother, a slave steals a golden cup from the lair of a dragon at Earnanæs. When the dragon sees that the cup has been stolen, it leaves its cave in a rage, burning everything in sight. Beowulf and his warriors come to fight the dragon, but Beowulf tells his men that he will fight the dragon alone and that they should wait on the barrow. Beowulf descends to do battle with the dragon, but finds himself outmatched. His men, upon seeing this and fearing for their lives, retreat into the woods. One of his men, Wiglaf, however, in great distress at Beowulf's plight, comes to his aid. The two slay the dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded. After Beowulf dies, Wiglaf remains by his side, grief-stricken. When the rest of the men finally return, Wiglaf bitterly admonishes them, blaming their cowardice for Beowulf's death. Afterward, Beowulf is ritually burned on a great pyre in Geatland while his people wail and mourn him, fearing that without him, the Geats are defenceless against attacks from surrounding tribes. Afterwards, a barrow, visible from the sea, is built in his memory (Beowulf lines 2712–3182).[29]

text: Authorship and date[edit]

text: Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia; its dating has attracted considerable scholarly attention. The poem has been dated to between the 8th and the early 11th centuries, with some recent scholarship offering what has been called "a cohesive and compelling case for Beowulf's early composition."[30][31] However, opinion differs as to whether the composition of the poem is nearly contemporary with its transcription, whether it was first written in the 8th century, or if a proto-version of the poem was perhaps composed at an even earlier time (possibly as one of the Bear's Son Tales) and orally transmitted for many years, then transcribed in its present form at a later date. Albert Lord felt strongly that the manuscript represents the transcription of a performance, though likely taken at more than one sitting.[32] J. R. R. Tolkien believed that the poem retains too genuine a memory of Anglo-Saxon paganism to have been composed more than a few generations after the completion of the Christianisation of England around AD 700,[33] and Tolkien's conviction that the poem dates to the 8th century has been defended by Tom Shippey, Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and R.D. Fulk, among others.[34][35][36]

text: The claim to an early 11th-century date depends in part on scholars who argue that, rather than the transcription of a tale from the oral tradition by an earlier literate monk, Beowulf reflects an original interpretation of an earlier version of the story by the manuscript's two scribes. On the other hand, some scholars argue that linguistic, palaeographical, metrical, and onomastic considerations align to support a date of composition in the first half of the eighth century;[31][37][38][39] in particular, the poem's regular observation of etymological length distinctions (Max Kaluza's law) has been thought to demonstrate a date of composition in the first half of the eighth century.[35][36] However, scholars disagree about whether the metrical phenomena described by Kaluza's Law prove an early date of composition or are evidence of a longer prehistory of the Beowulf meter;[40] B.R. Hutcheson, for instance, does not believe Kaluza's Law can be used to date the poem, while claiming that "the weight of all the evidence Fulk presents in his book[b] tells strongly in favour of an eighth-century date."[41]

text: Manuscript[edit]

text: Beowulf survives in a single manuscript dated on palaeographical grounds to the late 10th or early 11th century. The manuscript measures 245 × 185 mm.[42]

text: Provenance[edit]

text: The poem is known only from a single manuscript, which is estimated to date from close to AD 1000, in which it appears with other works. The Beowulf manuscript is known as the Nowell Codex, gaining its name from 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell. The official designation is "British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.XV" because it was one of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton library in the middle of the 17th century. Many private antiquarians and book collectors, such as Sir Robert Cotton, used their own library classification systems. "Cotton Vitellius A.XV" translates as: the 15th book from the left on shelf A (the top shelf) of the bookcase with the bust of Roman Emperor Vitellius standing on top of it, in Cotton's collection. Kevin Kiernan argues that Nowell most likely acquired it through William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, in 1563, when Nowell entered Cecil's household as a tutor to his ward, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[43]

text: The earliest extant reference to the first foliation of the Nowell Codex was made sometime between 1628 and 1650 by Franciscus Junius (the younger).[44]:91 The ownership of the codex before Nowell remains a mystery.[44]:120

text: The Reverend Thomas Smith (1638–1710) and Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726) both catalogued the Cotton library (in which the Nowell Codex was held). Smith's catalogue appeared in 1696, and Wanley's in 1705.[45] The Beowulf manuscript itself is identified by name for the first time in an exchange of letters in 1700 between George Hickes, Wanley's assistant, and Wanley. In the letter to Wanley, Hickes responds to an apparent charge against Smith, made by Wanley, that Smith had failed to mention the Beowulf script when cataloguing Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XV. Hickes replies to Wanley "I can find nothing yet of Beowulph."[46] Kiernan theorised that Smith failed to mention the Beowulf manuscript because of his reliance on previous catalogues or because either he had no idea how to describe it or because it was temporarily out of the codex.[47]

text: It suffered damage in the Cotton Library fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Since then, parts of the manuscript have crumbled along with many of the letters. Rebinding efforts, though saving the manuscript from much degeneration, have nonetheless covered up other letters of the poem, causing further loss. Kevin Kiernan, in preparing his electronic edition of the manuscript, used fibre-optic backlighting and ultraviolet lighting to reveal letters in the manuscript lost from binding, erasure, or ink blotting.[48]

text: Writing[edit]

text: The Beowulf manuscript was transcribed from an original by two scribes, one of whom wrote the prose at the beginning of the manuscript and the first 1939 lines before breaking off in mid sentence.  The first scribe made a point of carefully regularizing the spelling of the original document by using the common West Saxon language and by avoiding any archaic or dialectical features. The second scribe, who wrote the remainder, with a difference in handwriting noticeable after line 1939, seems to have written more vigorously and with less interest. As a result, the second scribe's script retains more archaic dialectic features which allow modern scholars to ascribe the poem a cultural context.[49] While both scribes appear to proofread their work, there are nevertheless many errors.[50] The second scribe was ultimately the more conservative copyist of the two as he did not modify the spelling of the text as he wrote but rather copied what he saw in front of him. In the way that it is currently bound, the Beowulf manuscript is followed by the Old English poem Judith. Judith was written by the same scribe that completed Beowulf as evidenced through similar writing style. Worm-holes found in the last leaves of the Beowulf manuscript that aren't present in the Judith manuscript suggest that at one point Beowulf ended the volume. The rubbed appearance of some leaves also suggest that the manuscript stood on a shelf unbound, as is known to have been the case with other Old English manuscripts.[49] From knowledge of books held in the library at Malmesbury Abbey and available as source works, and from the identification of certain words particular to the local dialect found in the text, the transcription may have taken place there.[51]

text: Debate over oral tradition[edit]

text: The question of whether Beowulf was passed down through oral tradition prior to its present manuscript form has been the subject of much debate, and involves more than simply the issue of its composition. Rather, given the implications of the theory of oral-formulaic composition and oral tradition, the question concerns how the poem is to be understood, and what sorts of interpretations are legitimate.

text: Scholarly discussion about Beowulf in the context of the oral tradition was extremely active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The debate might be framed starkly as follows: on the one hand, we can hypothesise a poem put together from various tales concerning the hero (the Grendel episode, the Grendel's mother story, and the fire drake narrative). These fragments would have been told for many years in tradition, and learned by apprenticeship from one generation of illiterate poets to the next. The poem is composed orally and extemporaneously, and the archive of tradition on which it draws is oral, pagan, Germanic, heroic, and tribal. On the other hand, one might posit a poem which is composed by a literate scribe, who acquired literacy by way of learning Latin (and absorbing Latinate culture and ways of thinking), probably a monk and therefore profoundly Christian in outlook. On this view, the pagan references would be a sort of decorative archaising.[52][53] There is a third view that sees merit in both arguments above and attempts to bridge them, and so cannot be articulated as starkly as they can; it sees more than one Christianity and more than one attitude towards paganism at work in the poem; it sees the poem as initially the product of a literate Christian author with one foot in the pagan world and one in the Christian, himself perhaps a convert (or one whose forebears had been pagan), a poet who was conversant in both oral and literary composition and was capable of a masterful "repurposing" of poetry from the oral tradition.

text: However, scholars such as D.K. Crowne have proposed the idea that the poem was passed down from reciter to reciter under the theory of oral-formulaic composition, which hypothesises that epic poems were (at least to some extent) improvised by whoever was reciting them, and only much later written down. In his landmark work, The Singer of Tales, Albert Lord refers to the work of Francis Peabody Magoun and others, saying "the documentation is complete, thorough, and accurate. This exhaustive analysis is in itself sufficient to prove that Beowulf was composed orally."[54]

text: Examination of Beowulf and other Old English literature for evidence of oral-formulaic composition has met with mixed response. While "themes" (inherited narrative subunits for representing familiar classes of event, such as the "arming the hero",[55] or the particularly well-studied "hero on the beach" theme[56]) do exist across Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic works, some scholars conclude that Anglo-Saxon poetry is a mix of oral-formulaic and literate patterns, arguing that the poems both were composed on a word-by-word basis and followed larger formulae and patterns.[57]

text: Larry Benson argued that the interpretation of Beowulf as an entirely formulaic work diminishes the ability of the reader to analyse the poem in a unified manner, and with due attention to the poet's creativity. Instead, he proposed that other pieces of Germanic literature contain "kernels of tradition" from which Beowulf borrows and expands upon.[58][59] A few years later, Ann Watts argued against the imperfect application of one theory to two different traditions: traditional, Homeric, oral-formulaic poetry and Anglo-Saxon poetry.[59][60] Thomas Gardner agreed with Watts, arguing that the Beowulf text is of too varied a nature to be completely constructed from set formulae and themes.[59][61]

text: John Miles Foley wrote, referring to the Beowulf debate,[62] that while comparative work was both necessary and valid, it must be conducted with a view to the particularities of a given tradition; Foley argued with a view to developments of oral traditional theory that do not assume, or depend upon, ultimately unverifiable assumptions about composition, and instead delineate a more fluid continuum of traditionality and textuality.[63][64][65][55]

text: Finally, in the view of Ursula Schaefer, the question of whether the poem was "oral" or "literate" becomes something of a red herring.[66] In this model, the poem is created, and is interpretable, within both noetic horizons. Schaefer's concept of "vocality" offers neither a compromise nor a synthesis of the views which see the poem as on the one hand Germanic, pagan, and oral and on the other Latin-derived, Christian, and literate, but, as stated by Monika Otter: "... a 'tertium quid', a modality that participates in both oral and literate culture yet also has a logic and aesthetic of its own."[67]

text: Transcriptions and translations[edit]

text: Transcriptions[edit]

text: Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcriptions of the manuscript in 1786 and published the results in 1815, working as part of a Danish government historical research commission. He made one himself, and had another done by a professional copyist who knew no Anglo-Saxon. Since that time, however, the manuscript has crumbled further, making these transcripts a prized witness to the text. While the recovery of at least 2000 letters can be attributed to them, their accuracy has been called into question,[c] and the extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is uncertain.

text: Translations and adaptations[edit]

text: A great number of translations and adaptations are available, in poetry and prose. Andy Orchard, in A Critical Companion to Beowulf, lists 33 "representative" translations in his bibliography,[69] while the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies published Marijane Osborn's annotated list of over 300 translations and adaptations in 2003.[70] Beowulf has been translated into at least 23 other languages.[71]

text: 19th century

text: In 1805, the historian Sharon Turner translated selected verses into modern English.[72] This was followed in 1814 by John Josias Conybeare who published an edition "in English paraphrase and Latin verse translation."[72] In 1815, Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin published the first complete edition in Latin.[72] N. F. S. Grundtvig reviewed this edition in 1815 and created the first complete verse translation in Danish in 1820.[72] In 1837, John Mitchell Kemble created an important literal translation in English.[72] In 1895, William Morris & A. J. Wyatt published the ninth English translation.[72] Many retellings of Beowulf for children began appearing in the 20th century.[73]

text: 20th century

text: In 1909, Francis Barton Gummere's full translation in "English imitative meter" was published,[72] and was used as the text of Gareth Hinds's graphic novel based on Beowulf in 2007.

text: First published in 1928, Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg[74] (which included the poem in Old English, an extensive glossary of Old English terms, and general background information) became the "central source used by graduate students for the study of the poem and by scholars and teachers as the basis of their translations."[75]

text: Seamus Heaney's 1999 translation of the poem (referred to by Howell Chickering and many others as "Heaneywulf"[76]) was widely publicized.

text: 21st century

text: R. D. Fulk, of Indiana University, published the first facing-page edition and translation of the entire Nowell Codex manuscript in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series in 2010.[77]

text: Following research in the King's College London Archives, Carl Kears proposed that John Porter's translation, published in 1975 by Bill Griffiths' Pirate Press, was the first complete verse translation of the poem entirely accompanied by facing-page Old English.[78]

text: Translating Beowulf is one of the subjects of the 2012 publication Beowulf at Kalamazoo, containing a section with 10 essays on translation, and a section with 22 reviews of Heaney's translation (some of which compare Heaney's work with that of Anglo-Saxon scholar Roy Liuzza).[79]

text: J. R. R. Tolkien's long-awaited translation (edited by his son, Christopher) was published in 2014 as Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary.[80][81] This also includes Tolkien's own retelling of the story of Beowulf in his tale, Sellic Spell.

text: Maria Dahvana Headley published 'The Mere Wife' in 2018, retelling the story from the point of view of Grendel's Mother.[82]

text: Sources and analogues[edit]

text: Neither identified sources nor analogues for Beowulf can be definitively proven, but many conjectures have been made. These are important in helping historians understand the Beowulf manuscript, as possible source-texts or influences would suggest time-frames of composition, geographic boundaries within which it could be composed, or range (both spatial and temporal) of influence (i.e. when it was "popular" and where its "popularity" took it).

text: There are Scandinavian sources, international folkloric sources, and Celtic sources.[d][83]

text: Scandinavian parallels and sources[edit]

text: 19th century studies proposed that Beowulf was translated from a lost original Scandinavian work, but this idea was quickly abandoned. But Scandinavian works have continued to be studied as a possible source.[84] Proponents included Gregor Sarrazin (de) writing in 1886 that an Old Norse original version of Beowulf must have existed,[85] but that view was later debunked by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (de) (1914) who pointed out that Beowulf is fundamentally Christian and written at a time when any Norse tale would have most likely been pagan.[86]

text: Grettis saga[edit]

text: The epic's possible connection to Grettis saga was made early on by Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1878).[87]

text: Grettis saga is a family saga, and a story about Grettir Ásmundarson (is), a great-grandson of an Icelandic settler, cannot be comparably as old as Beowulf. Axel Olrik (1903) claimed that on the contrary, this saga was a reworking of Beowulf, and others had followed suit.[85]

text: However, Friedrich Panzer (de) (1910) wrote a thesis in which both Beowulf and Grettis saga drew from a common folkloric source, and this encouraged even a detractor such W. W. Lawrence to reposition his view, and entertain the possibility that certain elements in the saga (such as the waterfall in place of the mere) retained an older form.[85]

text: The viability of this connection has enjoyed enduring support, and was characterized as one of the few Scandinavian analogues to receive a general consensus of potential connection by Theodore M. Andersson (de) (1998).[88] But that same year, Magnús Fjalldal published a volume challenging the perception that there is a close parallel, and that tangential similarities were being overemphasized as analogies.[89]

text: Hrolf kraki and Bodvar Bjarki[edit]

text: Another candidate for a cogener analogue or possible source is the story of Hrolf kraki and his servant, the legendary bear-shapeshifter Bodvar Bjarki. The story survives in Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka and Saxo's Gesta Danorum. Hrolf kraki, one of the Skjöldungs, even appears as "Hrothulf" in the Anglo-Saxon epic. Hence a story about him and his followers may have developed as early as the 6th century.[90]

text: International folktale sources[edit]

text: Bear's Son Tale[edit]

text: Friedrich Panzer (1910) wrote a thesis that the first part of Beowulf (the Grendel Story) incorporated preexisting folktale material, and that the folktale in question was of the Bear's Son Tale (Bärensohnmärchen) type, which has surviving examples all over the world.[91][85]

text: This tale type was later catalogued as international folktale type 301, now formally entitled "The Three Stolen Princesses" type in Hans Uther's catalogue, although the "Bear's Son" is still used in Beowulf criticism, if not so much in folkloristic circles.[85]

text: However, although this folkloristic approach was seen as a step in the right direction, "The Bear's Son" tale has later been regarded by many as not a close enough parallel to be a viable choice.[92] Later, Peter Jørgensen, looking for a more concise frame of reference, coined a "two-troll tradition" that covers both Beowulf and Grettis saga: "a Norse 'ecotype' in which a hero enters a cave and kills two giants, usually of different sexes";[93] which has emerged as a more attractive folk tale parallel, according to a 1998 assessment by Andersson (Andersson|de).[94][95]

text: Irish folktales[edit]

text: Similarity of the epic to the Irish folktale "The Hand and the Child" had already been noted by Albert S. Cook (1899), and others even earlier,[e][96][86][f] Swedish folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow (de) (1914) then made a strong argument for the case of parallelism in "The Hand and the Child", because the folktale type demonstrated a "monstrous arm" motif that corresponded with Beowulf wrenching off Grendel's arm. For no such correspondence could be perceived in the Bear's Son Tale or Grettis saga.[g][97][96]

text: James Carney and Martin Puhvel also agree with this "Hand and the Child" contextualisation.[h] Puhvel supported the "Hand and the Child" theory through such motifs as (in Andersson's words) "the more powerful giant mother, the mysterious light in the cave, the melting of the sword in blood, the phenomenon of battle rage, swimming prowess, combat with water monsters, underwater adventures, and the bear-hug style of wrestling."[98]

text: Classical sources[edit]

text: Attempts to find classical or Late Latin influence or analogue in Beowulf are almost exclusively linked with Homer's Odyssey or Virgil's Aeneid. In 1926, Albert S. Cook suggested a Homeric connection due to equivalent formulas, metonymies, and analogous voyages.[99] In 1930, James A. Work also supported the Homeric influence, stating that encounter between Beowulf and Unferth was parallel to the encounter between Odysseus and Euryalus in Books 7–8 of the Odyssey, even to the point of both characters giving the hero the same gift of a sword upon being proven wrong in their initial assessment of the hero's prowess. This theory of Homer's influence on Beowulf remained very prevalent in the 1920s, but started to die out in the following decade when a handful of critics stated that the two works were merely "comparative literature",[100] although Greek was known in late 7th century England: Bede states that Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 668, and he taught Greek. Several English scholars and churchmen are described by Bede as being fluent in Greek due to being taught by him; Bede claims to be fluent in Greek himself.[101]

text: Frederick Klaeber, among others, argued for a connection between Beowulf and Virgil near the start of the 20th century, claiming that the very act of writing a secular epic in a Germanic world represents Virgilian influence. Virgil was seen as the pinnacle of Latin literature, and Latin was the dominant literary language of England at the time, therefore making Virgilian influence highly likely.[102] Similarly, in 1971, Alistair Campbell stated that the apologue technique used in Beowulf is so rare in epic poetry aside from Virgil that the poet who composed Beowulf could not have written the poem in such a manner without first coming across Virgil's writings.[103]

text: Biblical influences[edit]

text: It cannot be denied that Biblical parallels occur in the text, whether seen as a pagan work with "Christian colouring" added by scribes or as a "Christian historical novel, with selected bits of paganism deliberately laid on as 'local colour'," as Margaret E. Goldsmith did in "The Christian Theme of Beowulf,".[104] Beowulf channels the Book of Genesis, the Book of Exodus, and the Book of Daniel[105] in its inclusion of references to the Genesis creation narrative, the story of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, the Devil, Hell, and the Last Judgment.[104]

text: Dialect[edit]

text:
Part of a series onOld English
Dialects[show]
Kentish
Mercian
Northumbrian
West Saxon

Use[show]
Orthography(Runic alphabet, Latin alphabet)
Grammar
Phonology
Phonological history

Literature[show]
Beowulf
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Cædmon's Hymn

History[show]
Development of Old English
Influences
Proto-Germanic
Latin
Norse
Brittonic

Legacy[show]
Middle English
Early Modern English
Modern English
Scots
vte

tag: table

text: The poem mixes the West Saxon and Anglian dialects of Old English, though it predominantly uses West Saxon, as do other Old English poems copied at the time.[106]

text: There is a wide array of linguistic forms in the Beowulf manuscript. It is this fact that leads some scholars to believe that Beowulf has endured a long and complicated transmission through all the main dialect areas.[107] The poem retains a complicated mix of the following dialectical forms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Early West Saxon, Kentish and Late West Saxon.[44]:20–21 There are in Beowulf more than 3100 distinct words, and almost 1300 occur exclusively, or almost exclusively, in this poem and in the other poetical texts. Considerably more than one-third of the total vocabulary is alien from ordinary prose use. There are, in round numbers, three hundred and sixty uncompounded verbs in Beowulf, and forty of them are poetical words in the sense that they are unrecorded or rare in the existing prose writings. One hundred and fifty more occur with the prefix ge- (reckoning a few found only in the past-participle), but of these one hundred occur also as simple verbs, and the prefix is employed to render a shade of meaning which was perfectly known and thoroughly familiar except in the latest Anglo-Saxon period. The nouns number sixteen hundred. Seven hundred of them, including those formed with prefixes, of which fifty (or considerably more than half) have ge-, are simple nouns, at the highest reckoning not more than one-quarter is absent in prose. That this is due in some degree to accident is clear from the character of the words, and from the fact that several reappear and are common after the Norman Conquest.[108]

text: Form and metre[edit]

text: An Old English poem such as Beowulf is very different from modern poetry. Anglo-Saxon poets typically used alliterative verse, a form of verse in which the first half of the line (the a-verse) is linked to the second half (the b-verse) through similarity in initial sound. In addition, the two halves are divided by a caesura: "Oft Scyld Scefing \\ sceaþena þreatum" (l. 4). This verse form maps stressed and unstressed syllables onto abstract entities known as metrical positions. There is no fixed number of beats per line: the first one cited has three (Oft SCYLD SCEFING, with ictus on the suffix -ING) whereas the second has two (SCEAþena ÞREATum).

text: The poet has a choice of epithets or formulae to use in order to fulfil the alliteration. When speaking or reading Old English poetry, it is important to remember for alliterative purposes that many of the letters are not pronounced in the same way as in modern English. The letter ⟨h⟩, for example, is always pronounced (Hroðgar: [ˈhroðgar]), and the digraph ⟨cg⟩ is pronounced [dʒ], as in the word edge. Both ⟨f⟩ and ⟨s⟩ vary in pronunciation depending on their phonetic environment. Between vowels or voiced consonants, they are voiced, sounding like modern ⟨v⟩ and ⟨z⟩, respectively. Otherwise they are unvoiced, like modern ⟨f⟩ in fat and ⟨s⟩ in sat. Some letters which are no longer found in modern English, such as thorn, ⟨þ⟩, and eth, ⟨ð⟩ – representing both pronunciations of modern English ⟨th⟩, as /θ/ in thing and /ð/ this – are used extensively both in the original manuscript and in modern English editions. The voicing of these characters echoes that of ⟨f⟩ and ⟨s⟩. Both are voiced (as in this) between other voiced sounds: oðer, laþleas, suþern. Otherwise they are unvoiced (as in thing): þunor, suð, soþfæst.

text: Kennings are also a significant technique in Beowulf. They are evocative poetic descriptions of everyday things, often created to fill the alliterative requirements of the metre. For example, a poet might call the sea the "swan-road" or the "whale-road"; a king might be called a "ring-giver." There are many kennings in Beowulf, and the device is typical of much of classic poetry in Old English, which is heavily formulaic. The poem also makes extensive use of elided metaphors.[109]

text: J. R. R. Tolkien argued in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics that the poem is not an epic, and while no conventional term exactly fits, the nearest would be elegy.[110]

text: Interpretation and criticism[edit]

text: The history of modern Beowulf criticism is often said to begin with J. R. R. Tolkien,[111] author and Merton professor of Anglo-Saxon at University of Oxford, who in his 1936 lecture to the British Academy criticised his contemporaries' excessive interest in its historical implications.[112][citation not found] He noted in Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics that as a result the poem's literary value had been largely overlooked and argued that the poem "is in fact so interesting as poetry, in places poetry so powerful, that this quite overshadows the historical content..."[113]

text: Paganism and Christianity[edit]

text: In historical terms, the poem's characters would have been Norse pagans (the historical events of the poem took place before the Christianisation of Scandinavia), yet the poem was recorded by Christian Anglo-Saxons who had mostly converted from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism around the 7th century – both Anglo-Saxon paganism and Norse paganism share a common origin as both are forms of Germanic paganism. Beowulf thus depicts a Germanic warrior society, in which the relationship between the lord of the region and those who served under him was of paramount importance.[114]

text: In terms of the relationship between characters in Beowulf to God, one might recall the substantial amount of paganism that is present throughout the work. Literary critics such as Fred C. Robinson argue that the Beowulf poet arguably tries to send a message to readers during the Anglo-Saxon time period regarding the state of Christianity in their own time. Robinson argues that the intensified religious aspects of the Anglo-Saxon period inherently shape the way in which the Poet alludes to paganism as presented in Beowulf. The Poet arguably calls on Anglo-Saxon readers to recognize the imperfect aspects of their supposed Christian lifestyles. In other words, the Poet is referencing their "Anglo-Saxon Heathenism." In terms of the characters of the epic itself, Robinson argues that readers are "impressed" by the courageous acts of Beowulf and the speeches of Hrothgar (181). But one is ultimately left to feel sorry for both men as they are fully detached from supposed "Christian truth" (181). The relationship between the characters of Beowulf, and the overall message of the Poet, regarding their relationship with God is largely debated among readers and literary critics alike.

text: At the same time, Richard North argues that the Beowulf poet interpreted "Danish myths in Christian form" (as the poem would have served as a form of entertainment for a Christian audience), and states: "As yet we are no closer to finding out why the first audience of Beowulf liked to hear stories about people routinely classified as damned. This question is pressing, given... that Anglo-Saxons saw the Danes as 'heathens' rather than as foreigners."[115] Grendel's mother and Grendel are described as descendants of Cain, a fact which some scholars link to the Cain tradition.[116]

text: Other scholars disagree, however, as to the meaning and nature of the poem: is it a Christian work set in a Germanic pagan context? The question suggests that the conversion from the Germanic pagan beliefs to Christian ones was a prolonged and gradual process over several centuries, and it remains unclear the ultimate nature of the poem's message in respect to religious belief at the time it was written. Robert F. Yeager notes the facts that form the basis for these questions:

text: That the scribes of Cotton Vitellius A.XV were Christian beyond doubt, and it is equally sure that Beowulf was composed in a Christianised England since conversion took place in the sixth and seventh centuries. The only Biblical references in Beowulf are to the Old Testament, and Christ is never mentioned. The poem is set in pagan times, and none of the characters is demonstrably Christian. In fact, when we are told what anyone in the poem believes, we learn that they are pagans. Beowulf's own beliefs are not expressed explicitly. He offers eloquent prayers to a higher power, addressing himself to the "Father Almighty" or the "Wielder of All." Were those the prayers of a pagan who used phrases the Christians subsequently appropriated? Or, did the poem's author intend to see Beowulf as a Christian Ur-hero, symbolically refulgent with Christian virtues?[117]

text: The location of the composition of the poem is also intensely disputed. In 1914, F.W. Moorman, the first professor of English Language at University of Leeds, claimed that Beowulf was composed in Yorkshire,[118] but E. Talbot Donaldson claims that it was probably composed more than twelve hundred years ago, during the first half of the eighth century, and that the writer was a native of what was then called West Mercia, located in the Western Midlands of England. However, the late tenth-century manuscript "which alone preserves the poem" originated in the kingdom of the West Saxons – as it is more commonly known.[119] Donaldson wrote that "the poet who put the materials into their present form was a Christian and ... poem reflects a Christian tradition".[120]

text: Politics and warfare[edit]

text: Stanley B. Greenfield has suggested that references to the human body throughout Beowulf emphasise the relative position of thanes to their lord. He argues that the term "shoulder-companion" could refer to both a physical arm as well as a thane (Aeschere) who was very valuable to his lord (Hrothgar). With Aeschere's death, Hrothgar turns to Beowulf as his new "arm."[121] Also, Greenfield argues the foot is used for the opposite effect, only appearing four times in the poem. It is used in conjunction with Unferð (a man described by Beowulf as weak, traitorous, and cowardly). Greenfield notes that Unferð is described as "at the king's feet" (line 499). Unferð is also a member of the foot troops, who, throughout the story, do nothing and "generally serve as backdrops for more heroic action."[122]

text: Daniel Podgorski has argued that the work is best understood as an examination of inter-generational vengeance-based conflict, or feuding.[123] In this context, the poem operates as an indictment of feuding conflicts as a function of its conspicuous, circuitous, and lengthy depiction of the Geatish-Swedish wars—coming into contrast with the poem's depiction of the protagonist Beowulf as being disassociated from the ongoing feuds in every way.[123]


document_title: Red Sun Rising

question_text: who is the lead singer of red sun rising

text: Red Sun Rising

text: History[edit]

text: Red Sun Rising formed in 2006 when Mike Protich and Ryan Williams, who used to be high school classmates, struck up a conversation about music at a gas station. By 2007, Red Sun Rising's first line-up was formed and they were playing local gigs. In 2011, Tyler Valendza joined the group, bringing a new element to the group's sound.

text: They built a following by previewing their self-released albums over their social media websites and were touring nationally by 2013.[3] In 2014, the band signed with Razor & Tie records and released their album Polyester Zeal in August 2015 which debuted at number 11 on the Billboard Hard Rock album chart.[4] In 2015, Tyler Valendza left the band and was replaced by Dave McGarry, who was first announced as the new guitarist in a Facebook post.[5]

text: Their singles "The Otherside" and "Emotionless" both reached number 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, making them the first band since Trapt to reach number 1 twice on their first album.[citation needed] Their third single "Amnesia" peaked at number 6 on the same chart. The band often uses the hashtag #WeAreThread, which is said to be the name of the genre of music they would like to represent. They explain that their influences are like threads in a fabric and they feel they cannot truly be described as one particular genre.[6]

text: Discography[edit]

text: Studio albums[edit]

text:
Title

Peak chart positions

Rock Albums

Hard Rock Albums

Heatseekers Albums

Polyester Zeal
Released: August 7, 2015
Label: Razor & Tie
Formats: CD, digital download

41[7]

11[8]

7[9]

Thread
Released: March 30, 2018
Label: Razor & Tie
Formats: CD, digital download

-

21

3

"—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory.

text: Independent albums[edit]

text:
Title

Red Sun Rising[10][11]
Released: 2010
Label: Independent
Formats: CD, digital download

Making of Kings
Released: 2011
Label: Independent
Formats: CD, digital download

text: EPs[edit]

text:
The Fix (2012)
Into Forever (2013)

tag: ul

text: Singles[edit]

text:
Title

Year

Peak chart positions

Album

MainstreamRock[12]

Rock Airplay[13]

Hot Rock Songs[14]

"The Otherside"

2015

1

17

42

Polyester Zeal

"Emotionless"

2016

1

17

38

"Amnesia"

6

27

—

"Unnatural"

2017

—

—

—

"Uninvited"(Alanis Morissette cover)[15]

—

—

—

Non-album track

"Deathwish"

2018

7

37

—

Thread

"Clarity"

—

—

—

"—" denotes a single that did not chart or was not released in that territory.

text: Music videos[edit]

text:
Title

Year

Director

Album

"Making of Kings"

2010

Unknown

Making of Kings

"Beautiful Suicide"

2011

Red Sun Rising

"Love Is All to Blame"

2013

The Fix (EP)

"The Otherside"

2015

Brad Golowin[16]

Polyester Zeal

"Emotionless"

2016

Dylan Marko Bell

"Amnesia"

Ryan Valdez[17]

"Uninvited"

2017

Brad Golowin

N/A

"Deathwish"

2018

Thread

"Fascination"

"Veins"

text: Band members[edit]

text: Current members

text:
Mike Protich – lead vocals, guitar (2007–present)
Ryan Williams – lead guitar (2007–present)
Dave McGarry – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2015–present)[5]
Ricky Miller – bass, backing vocals (2015–present)
Pat Gerasia – drums, percussion (2015–present)

text: Former members

text:
Mark Jendrisak – drums (2009–2013)
Hayes Hornish – bass, backing vocals (2007–2011)
Mitch Bandel – bass, backing vocals (2011–2013)
Mark Matthews – bass, backing vocals (2013–2015)
Adam Mercer – drums, percussion (2013–2014)
Tyler Valendza – rhythm guitar (2012–2015)[5]