Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages

Medieval Futures explores the rich variety of ways in which medieval people imagined the future, from the prophetic anticipation of the end of the world to the mundane expectation that the world would continue indefinitely, permitting ordinary human plans and provisions. The articles explore the ways in which the future was represented to serve the present, methods used to predict the future, and strategies adopted in order to plan and provide for it. Different conceptions of the future are shown to relate to different social groups and the emergence of new mentalities, suggesting that changing conceptions of the future were related to general shifts in medieval culture. J.A. BURROW is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol; IAN P. WEI is Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol.Contributors: PIERO BOITANI, PAUL BRAND, ELIZABETH A.R. BROWN, MARCUS BULL, JOHN BURROW, RHIANNON PURDIE, PHYLLIS B. ROBERTS, JEAN-CLAUDE SCHMITT, IAN P. WEI