thumb | right | alt=Title page of the earliest known edition of Amadís de Gaula, 1508, in the British Library. The text was written in the fifteenth century. | Title page of the earliest known edition of Amadís de Gaula, 1508, in the [[British Library. The text was written in the fifteenth century.]]

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1508.

Events

  • April 4 – John Lydgate's poem The Complaint of the Black Knight becomes the first book printed in Scotland, from the Chepman and Myllar Press in Edinburgh.
  • unknown date
  • The earliest known printed edition of the chivalric romance Amadis de Gaula, as edited and expanded by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (died c. 1505), is published in Castilian at Zaragoza.
  • Elia Levita completes writing the Bovo-Bukh in Yiddish.
  • Estimated date of Manuscript D of Leonardo da Vinci's treatise on painting.

New books

Prose

  • Desiderius Erasmus – Adagiorum chiliades (2nd ed., Venice)
  • Johannes Trithemius – De septem secundeis

Drama

  • Ludovico Ariosto – La Cassaria
  • The World and the Child (possible date)

Poetry

  • William Dunbar
  • The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, and Other Poems
  • The Goldyn Targe

Births

  • April 3 – Jean Daurat (or Dorat), French poet and scholar, member of La Pléiade (died 1588)
  • April 23 – Georg Sabinus, German poet, diplomat and academic (died 1560)
  • June 13 – Alessandro Piccolomini, Italian humanist philosopher, translator and playwright (died 1579)
  • December 21 – Thomas Naogeorgus, German Protestant reformer and Latin-language playwright (died 1563)
  • Unknown dates
  • Marin Držić, Croatian dramatist, author and poet (died 1567)
  • Isabel de Josa, Catalan writer (died 1575)
  • Primož Trubar, Slovene Protestant reformer, pioneer of Slovenian written language (died 1586)

Deaths

  • February 4 – Conrad Celtes, German and Latin-language poet (born 1459)
  • May 13 – Martial d'Auvergne, French poet (born 1420)
  • June 6 – Ercole Strozzi, Italian poet, murdered (born 1471)
  • August 27 – Hieronymus Münzer, co-author of the Nuremberg Chronicle (born 1437/47)

References