Against the background of Christian-determined visions of the future, decision-making processes represent a form of literary appropriation and shaping of the future. The anthology poses the question of the relationship between decision-making processes and drafts of the future in pre-modern narration: what is the significance of telling decisions against the background of 'closed' conceptions of the future? The collected contributions cover a broad spectrum of pre-modern storytelling and for the first time measure the scope for optionality in the literature of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.