The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)

Is modernity synonymous with progress? Did the Renaissance really break with the cyclical, agrarian time of the Middle Ages, inaugurating a new concept of irreversible time in a secular culture defined by development? How does methodology affect scholarly responses to the idea of the future in the past? This collection of interdisciplinary essays from the fields of literary criticism, cultural studies, politics and intellectual history offers new answers to these commonplace questions. They explore elite and popular culture, women and men’s experiences, and the encounter between East and West, providing a comparative view on the range of personal, political and social practices with which early modern people planned for, imagined, manipulated or even rejected the future. Examining poetry, architecture, colonial exploration, technology, drama, satire, wills, childbirth and deathbed rituals, humanism, religious radicalism and republicanism, this collection provides new readings of canonical early modern texts and insights into popular culture. With a foreword by Peter Burke. In pursuit of the millennia: Robert Crowley's changing concept of apocalypticism / A. Wade Razzi Montaigne's forays into the undiscovered country / Richard Scholar "My promise sent unto myself": futurity and the language of obligation in Sidney's Old Arcadia / J.K. Barret Turkish futures: prophecy and the other / Brinda Charry / "Provide for the future, and times succeeding": Walter Raleigh and the progress of time / Andrew Hiscock France Antarctique and France Equinoctiale: sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French representations of a colonial future in Brazil / Michael Harrigan Planning ahead: a future for old age in dialogue of comfort, Henry IV parts one and two and All's well that ends well / Nina Taunton The future now: chance, time and natural divination in the thought of Francis Bacon / A. P. Langman Prophetic architecture: Agrippa d'Aubign in Paris / Phillip John Usher Astrology, ritual and revolution in the works of Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) / Peter J. Forshaw Mocking the future in French Renaissance mock-prognostications / Hugh Roberts "Meteorologies and extravagant speculations": the future legends of early modern English natural philosophy / Rob Iliffe. In pursuit of the millennia: Robert Crowley's changing concept of apocalypticism / A. Wade Razzi Montaigne's forays into the undiscovered country / Richard Scholar 'My promise sent unto myself': futurity and the language of obligation in Sidney's Old Arcadia / J.K. Barret Turkish futures: prophecy and the other / Brinda Charry 'Provide for the future, and times succeeding': Walter Ralegh and the progress of time / Andrew Hiscock France Antarctique and France Equinoctiale: sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French representations of a colonial future in Brazil / Michael Harrigan Planning ahead: a future for old age in Dialogue of comfort, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and All's well that ends well / Nina Taunton The future now: chance, time and natural divination in the thought of Francis Bacon / A.P. Langman Prophetic architecture: Agrippa d'Aubigné in Paris / Phillip John Usher Astrology, ritual and revolution in the works of Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) / Peter J. Forshaw Mocking the future in French Renaissance mock-prognostications / Hugh Roberts 'Meteorologies and extravagant speculations': the future legends of early modern English natural philosophy / Rob Iliffe.

Is modernity synonymous with progress? Did the Renaissance really break with the cyclical, agrarian time of the Middle Ages, inaugurating a new concept of irreversible time in a secular culture defined by development? How does methodology affect scholarly responses to the idea of the future in the past? This collection of interdisciplinary essays from the fields of literary criticism, cultural studies, politics and intellectual history offers new answers to these commonplace questions. They explore elite and popular culture, women and men’s experiences, and the encounter between East and West, providing a comparative view on the range of personal, political and social practices with which early modern people planned for, imagined, manipulated or even rejected the future. Examining poetry, architecture, colonial exploration, technology, drama, satire, wills, childbirth and deathbed rituals, humanism, religious radicalism and republicanism, this collection provides new readings of canonical early modern texts and insights into popular culture.

With a foreword by Peter Burke.

This collection of essays examines the idea of the future in early modern European literature, politics, religion, science, and social life. Investigating how both elite and popular writers represented their access to or control over the future, it proposes new insights into one of the defining characteristics of modernity.-- Provided by publisher