Perspectives on Inflationary Cosmology

The inflationary universe has become one of the essential ingredients of the standard cosmology. In this talk I first review the basics of inflation, focusing on the canonical single-field slow-roll model. It is emphasized that inflation is the source of all the structures in the Universe and that the predictions are perfectly consistent with observations. Nevertheless there are some hints of non-canonical features in the observational data. In addition, there is a growing interest in the gravitational waves originating from inflation, either directly or indirectly, and the associated phenomena such as the primordial black hole formation. I review recent developments in these topics.