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Authors
Authors, languages, countries, and life dates.
Baldassare Castiglione
Diplomat and author of The Book of the Courtier, a dialogue on social grace.LanguageitalianDates1478 to 1529Louise Labé
A Lyon poet whose sonnets give female desire a direct and learned voice.LanguagefrDates1524 to 1566Marguerite de Navarre
Queen, patron, and author of the Heptameron at the heart of French humanism.LanguagefrDates1492 to 1549Michel de Montaigne
The inventor of the modern essay turned his own judgment into an object of observation.LanguagefrDates1533 to 1592Niccolò Machiavelli
Florentine secretary who studies power as a practice before judging it as morality.LanguageitalianDates1469 to 1527Pietro Bembo
Venetian humanist whose prose theory helped establish Tuscan as a literary standard.LanguageitalianDates1470 to 1547Thomas More
English humanist whose Utopia turns travel narrative into political experiment.LanguagelatinDates1478 to 1535William Shakespeare
Playwright and poet who turned rhetoric, theatre, and social observation into a shared language.LanguageenDates1564 to 1616