| A | B |
|---|
| Dante Aligheri | 1265-1321. A Florentine who was involved in politics, and thus exiled, who wrote the Divine Comedy. |
| Giovanni Boccaccio | 1313-1375. A Florentine writer and humanist who was most known for Decameron, a collection of short stories. |
| Geoffrey Chaucer | 1343?-1400. A diplomat and poet sponsored by the English court, who wrote Cantebury Tales. |
| dialectics | The study of logic and the use of logic to win arguments and prove theories. |
| hagiography | The writing of the lives of saints, frequently idealized and embellsihed to present moral lessons. |
| patristic | The writings of the early Church Fathers were called "patristic" from the Latin "pater" for father. |
| Francesco Petrarch | 1304-1374. An Italian poet and considered to be the first humanist. |
| philology | The study of language, especially in relation to its historical and contextual setting. |
| poet laureate | A poet honored by the State and designated to write poetry for State occasions. |
| syntax | The study of the arragnement of words and how those arrangements affects their meaning and relation. |
| rhetoric | The art of effective and persuasive speaking. |
| Vulgate Bible | Written in the late 4th century by St. Jerome, it was a direct translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Latin. |
| vulgate | From the Latin "vulgare," to mean common. |
