Short answers, pulled from the story.
Renaissance literature began in the 14th century with Petrarch receiving a laurel wreath in Rome on the 2nd of May 1341. This event marked the birth of the movement within Italy and shifted focus toward an anthropocentric perspective.
Johannes Gutenberg developed movable type printing technology during the 1440s. This invention encouraged authors to write in local vernacular languages instead of Greek or Latin and widened the reading audience across Europe.
Petrarch, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Giovanni Boccaccio, Jacopo Sannazaro, and Michelangelo stand out as notable examples of early Italian writers. These figures defined the character of the earliest Renaissance literature that appeared in the 1300s.
The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and Erasmus produced works that brought the movement beyond its Italian origins into diverse cultural contexts.
Countries that were predominantly Catholic or Protestant experienced the Renaissance differently across the continent while areas dominated by the Eastern Orthodox Church remained largely outside its influence. Regions under Islamic rule also fell largely outside the scope of this European movement due to varying local religious traditions and political structures.