1508 in literature
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, 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
- Johannes Trithemius – ''De septem secundeis''
Drama
- Ludovico Ariosto – La Cassaria
- ''The World and the Child''
Poetry
- William Dunbar
- *The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, and Other Poems
- *''The Goldyn Targe''
Births
- April 3 – Jean Daurat, French poet and scholar, member of La Pléiade
- April 23 – Georg Sabinus, German poet, diplomat and academic
- June 13 – Alessandro Piccolomini, Italian humanist philosopher, translator and playwright
- December 21 – Thomas Naogeorgus, German Protestant reformer and Latin-language playwright
- Unknown dates
- *Marin Držić, Croatian dramatist, author and poet
- *Isabel de Josa, Catalan writer
- *Primož Trubar, Slovene Protestant reformer, pioneer of Slovenian written language
Deaths
- February 4 – Conrad Celtes, German and Latin-language poet
- May 13 – Martial d'Auvergne, French poet
- June 6 – Ercole Strozzi, Italian poet, murdered
- August 27 – Hieronymus Münzer, co-author of the Nuremberg Chronicle