Short answers, pulled from the story.
Renaissance literature began in 14th-century Italy and spread across Europe through the 17th century. Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Ariosto are among the earliest notable examples of Italian Renaissance writers.
Renaissance literature is characterized by a humanist philosophy, the recovery of classical Greek-Roman traditions, an anthropocentric worldview, and the revival of Platonic ideas. It also introduced new literary forms, including the essay (associated with Montaigne) and new metrical forms such as the Spenserian stanza.
Gutenberg's development of the printing press using movable type in the 1440s spread Renaissance ideas by encouraging authors to write in local vernacular languages rather than Latin or Greek. This widened the reading audience and accelerated the diffusion of humanist thought across Europe.
Major Renaissance authors include Italian writers Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Ariosto; Dutch scholar Erasmus; English writers Shakespeare, Spenser, Philip Sidney, and Thomas Wyatt; Spanish writers Cervantes and Garcilaso de la Vega; and Portuguese poet Luís de Camões, among many others across Europe.
Areas where the Eastern Orthodox Church held cultural dominance, and areas of Europe under Islamic rule, were more or less outside the influence of the Renaissance. The impact also varied between predominantly Catholic and Protestant countries.
The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. Scottish Renaissance writers include Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, George Buchanan, and Elizabeth Melville.