1501 in literature

• Italic type (cut by Francesco Griffo) is first used by Aldus Manutius at the Aldine Press in Venice, in an octavo edition of Virgil's Aeneid. Manutius also publishes an edition of Petrarch's Le cose volgari and first adopts his dolphin and anchor device.
• The first volume of Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, the first collection of polyphonic music printed from movable type, is published by Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice.

• Desiderius Erasmus – Handbook of a Christian Knight (Enchiridion militis Christiani)
• Margery Kempe – The Book of Margery Kempe (posthumous)
• Nilakantha Somayaji – Tantrasamgraha

• Conradus Celtis – Ludus Diannae

{{main|1501 in poetry}}

• Gavin Douglas – The Palice of Honour (approximate date of composition)
• Marko Marulić – Judita (in Croatian)

• February 24 – Sixt Birck, German humanist dramatist and scholar (died 1554)
• unknown dates
• Bonaventure des Périers, French author and poet (suicide 1544)
• Maurice Scève, French poet (died c. 1564){{cite book|author=Jo Eldridge Carney|title=Renaissance and Reformation, 1500-1620: A Biographical Dictionary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4TBFjimrHtQC&pg=PA317|year=2001|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-30574-0|pages=317}}
• Basilio Zanchi, Italian humanist Latin-language poet, scholar and librarian (died 1588) (born c. 1435){{Cite book |author=Lynn Thorndike |title=A History of Magic and Experimental Science: Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a9vWAAAAMAAJ |year=1934 |publisher=Columbia University Press |page=701}}
• probable – Garcilaso de la Vega, Spanish soldier and poet (died 1536){{cite book|author=Hayward Keniston|title=Garcilaso de la Vega: A Critical Study of His Life and Works|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kp5KAAAAMAAJ|year=1922|publisher=Hispanic society of America|page=5}}

• January 3 – Ali-Shir Nava'i, Timurid dynasty philosopher and Chagatai language poet (born 1441)
• August (probable) – Constantine Lascaris, Greek scholar and grammarian (born 1434){{Cite book |author1=Henry Duff Traill |author2=John Kendrick Bangs |title=Literature |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ubM4AQAAMAAJ |year=1898 |publisher=Harper and Brothers |page=643}}
• September 26 – Džore Držić, Croatian poet and playwright (born 1461)

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