1508 in literature

Events

• April 4 – John Lydgate's poem The Complaint of the Black Knight becomes the first book printed in Scotland.
• 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.

  New books

Prose

• Desiderius Erasmus – Adagiorum chiliades
• Johannes Trithemius – De septem secundeis

  Drama

• Ludovico Ariosto – :it:La Cassaria|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