Renaissance: Did you mean...?

The Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100-2050 BCE) is the oldest extant law code in the world. It was written by the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (r. 2047-2030 BCE) or his son Shulgi of Ur (r. 2029-1982 BCE) centuries before the famous Code of Hammurabi was...

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar. His most famous and influential work is the Decameron, completed by 1353, in which his ten characters present 100 tales of everyday life. The book covers all manner...

Ganymede (pronounced GAH-nuh-meed) is a youth in Greek mythology who is abducted by Zeus because of his great beauty and brought to Mount Olympus to serve as cupbearer. The story first appears in Homer’s Iliad without any suggestion of a...

Marguerite de Navarre (l. 1492-1549) was a writer, philosopher, diplomat, and Queen of Navarre, sister of King Francois I (Francis I of France, r. 1515-1547), mother of Jeanne d’Albret (l. 1528-1572) and grandmother of Henry IV of France...

Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi al-Granati, 1485-1554) was a diplomat, merchant traveller and scholar who famously voyaged from Timbuktu to the Niger River and wrote 'The Description of Africa' (La Descrittione...

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), or Kit Marlowe, was a poet and playwright of the English Renaissance who wrote during the Elizabethan Era (1558-1603). His mastery of the blank verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter – transformed the way plays...

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was an English poet, playwright, and literary critic, whose influence on English Renaissance literature during the Jacobean Era (1603-1625) has been regarded as second only to that of William Shakespeare (1564-1616...

John Fletcher (1579-1625) was a playwright of the English Renaissance who flourished during the Jacobean Era (1603-1625). The author of over 50 plays, he is known for developing the genre of tragicomedy in English literature, and for his...

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c. 90 - c. 20 BCE), better known simply as Vitruvius, was a Roman military engineer and architect who wrote De Architectura (On Architecture), a treatise which combines the history of ancient architecture and engineering...

Philology is derived from the Greek terms φίλος (love) and λόγος (word, reason) and literally means a love of words. It is the study of language in literary sources and is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics. Philology...