105 articles
Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti (1332–1400) was an Italian poet and novella writer, born at Ragusa to a Florentine merchant family, best known for his short-story collection the Trecentonovelle.
François Villon
François Villon (born François de Montcorbier, around 1431 in Paris) was a French poet of the late Middle Ages, known for his mock-testament poems and ballades; he disappeared after 1463.
Garcilaso de la Vega
Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1501–1536) was a Castilian poet, soldier, and diplomat from Toledo who, with Juan Boscán, introduced the Petrarchan sonnet into Spanish poetry.
Gaspara Stampa
Gaspara Stampa (1523 or 1525 – 1554) was an Italian Renaissance poet of Padua and Venice whose posthumous 1554 collection Rime made her a leading woman poet.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s-1400), English poet and royal civil servant, author of The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and Book of the Duchess; comptroller of wool customs under Edward III and Richard II; drew on Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch.
Giacomo da Lentini
Giacomo da Lentini, called il Notaro, was a Sicilian poet and imperial notary at the court of Frederick II, regarded as the central figure of the Sicilian school.
Giambattista Marino
Giambattista Marino, also known as Giovan Battista Marini (1569–1625), was an Italian Baroque poet from Naples whose sensual verse founded Marinism and whose mythological epic L'Adone was the most celebrated Italian poem of the seventeenth century.
Giovanni Battista Guarini
Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, diplomat, and literary theorist of the Ferrarese court, known for Il pastor fido, which developed the pastoral tragicomedy genre.
Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried von Strassburg was a Middle High German poet who died around 1210, known only as the author of Tristan, a courtly romance retelling the Tristan and Isolde legend.
Guido Cavalcanti
Guido Cavalcanti was a Florentine poet and philosopher of the late 13th century, the leading figure of the dolce stil novo and Dante's closest poetic friend.
Guido Guinizelli
Guido Guinizelli (also spelled Guinizzelli), born in Bologna and died in Monselice in 1276, was an Italian poet and judge regarded as the originator of the dolce stil novo.
Guillaume de Lorris
Guillaume de Lorris was a 13th-century French poet who wrote the first part of the Roman de la Rose, an allegorical dream-vision love poem in Old French.
Hartmann von Aue
Hartmann von Aue, also written Hartman von Ouwe, was a Middle High German poet and knight who wrote the first two German Arthurian romances, Erek and Iwein, around 1200.
Hendrik van Veldeke
Hendrik van Veldeke, also Heinrich von Veldeke, was a poet of the Meuse region active in the late twelfth century, the first Dutch writer known by name.
Hesiod (Ἡσίοδος)
Hesiod (Ἡσίοδος), early Greek epic poet of Ascra in Boeotia, around 700–650 BCE, author of the Theogony and Works and Days, the earliest systematic Greek accounts of the gods' origins and of moral and practical instruction.
Homer (Ὅμηρος)
Homer (Ὅμηρος) is the name tradition gives the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey. Nothing biographical is known; the Homeric Question debates whether one poet composed the epics, probably written down in the mid-eighth century BC.
Horace
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BCE), Roman lyric poet, satirist, and critic of Venusia; author of the Odes, Epodes, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica; Maecenas's protégé under Augustus.
Jacob Cats
Jacob Cats was a Dutch poet and statesman of the Golden Age who served as Grand Pensionary of Holland and became the most widely read writer of the Dutch Republic.
Jacob van Maerlant
Jacob van Maerlant (ca. 1230–ca. 1300) was a Flemish poet who wrote over 230,000 lines of Middle Dutch verse, first making scientific and historical knowledge available in the vernacular.
Jacopone da Todi
Jacopone da Todi, also known as Iacopone da Todi, was an Italian Franciscan friar and religious poet, born around 1230, probably the author of the Stabat Mater.
Jean Bodel
Jean Bodel, also written Jehan Bodel (c. 1165 – 1210), was a French trouvère and playwright of Arras, author of the oldest French miracle play.
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) was a French poet and fabulist whose 239 verse fables, drawn from Aesop, place him in the first rank of French literature.
Jean de Meun
Jean de Meun (c. 1240 – c. 1305) was a French poet who completed the Roman de la Rose, adding about 17,000 lines to Guillaume de Lorris's allegory.
Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique (c. 1440–1479) was a Castilian poet and soldier, author of the Coplas por la muerte de su padre, among the most famous Spanish poems.
Juan Ruiz
Juan Ruiz, known as the Archpriest of Hita (Arcipreste de Hita), was a 14th-century Castilian cleric and poet, presumed author of the medieval masterpiece Libro de buen amor.
Lucan
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, 39–65 CE) was a Roman poet whose epic Bellum Civile, on the war between Caesar and Pompey, is his only surviving work.
Lucilius
Gaius Lucilius (c. 180–102/1 BC) was a Roman poet of Suessa Aurunca who wrote thirty books of satires from about 130 BC and helped establish Roman verse satire.
Lucretius
Lucretius, or Titus Lucretius Carus, was a Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher of the mid-90s to mid-50s BCE, author of the six-book poem De rerum natura.
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), Italian Renaissance poet of the Este court at Ferrara, author of the chivalric epic Orlando furioso (1516, expanded 1532, 46 cantos in ottava rima), plus Satires and comedies; his dispute with Tasso and influence on English literature mark him out.
Luigi Pulci
Luigi Pulci (1432–1484) was an Italian poet of Florence, best known for Morgante, a comic chivalric poem in ottava rima that preceded Boiardo and Ariosto.