For the writers of the Renaissance, Greco-Roman inspiration was shown both in the themes of their writing and in the literary forms they used.
The search for pleasures of the senses and a critical and rational spirit completed the ideological panorama of the period.
New literary genres such as the essay (Montaigne) and new metrical forms such as the Spenserian stanza made their appearance.
The development of the printing press (using movable type) by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s encouraged authors to write in their local vernacular instead of Greek or Latin classical languages, thus widening the reading audience and promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas.
Significant writers and poets associated with the Renaissance literature are: Italian: Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Jacopo Sannazaro, Niccolò Machiavelli, Ludovico Ariosto, Michelangelo Portuguese: Jorge de Montemor, Luís de Camões Spanish: Baptista Mantuanus, Miguel de Cervantes French: François Rabelais Dutch: Erasmus English: Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare German: Georg Rudolf Weckherlin