diff --git a/Doc/library/urllib.rst b/Doc/library/urllib.rst
index 5621f51..7b4d0bf 100644
--- a/Doc/library/urllib.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/urllib.rst
@@ -202,24 +202,40 @@
 Utility functions
 -----------------
 
-.. function:: quote(string[, safe])
+.. function:: quote(string[, safe[, encoding[, errors]]])
 
    Replace special characters in *string* using the ``%xx`` escape. Letters,
    digits, and the characters ``'_.-'`` are never quoted. By default, this
-   function is intended for quoting the path section of the URL.The optional
+   function is intended for quoting the path section of the URL. The optional
    *safe* parameter specifies additional characters that should not be quoted
    --- its default value is ``'/'``.
 
+   *string* may be either a :class:`str` or a :class:`unicode`.
+
+   The optional *encoding* and *errors* parameters specify how to deal with
+   non-ASCII characters, as accepted by the :meth:`unicode.encode` method.
+   *encoding* defaults to ``'utf-8'``.
+   *errors* defaults to ``'strict'``, meaning unsupported characters raise a
+   :class:`UnicodeEncodeError`.
+   Non-Unicode strings are not encoded by default, and all bytes are allowed.
+
    Example: ``quote('/~connolly/')`` yields ``'/%7econnolly/'``.
 
+   Example: ``quote(u'/El Niño/')`` yields ``'/El%20Ni%C3%B1o/'``.
 
-.. function:: quote_plus(string[, safe])
+   .. versionchanged:: 2.7.1
+      Added *encoding* and *errors* parameters.
+
+
+.. function:: quote_plus(string[, safe[, encoding[, errors]]])
 
    Like :func:`quote`, but also replaces spaces by plus signs, as required for
    quoting HTML form values when building up a query string to go into a URL.
    Plus signs in the original string are escaped unless they are included in
    *safe*.  It also does not have *safe* default to ``'/'``.
 
+   Example: ``quote_plus(u'/El Niño/')`` yields ``'%2FEl+Ni%C3%B1o%2F'``.
+
 
 .. function:: unquote(string)
 
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_urllib.py b/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
index 9bd8857..77fa8f6 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_urllib.py
@@ -355,6 +355,38 @@
         self.assertEqual(quote_by_default, result,
                          "using quote_plus(): %s != %s" %
                          (quote_by_default, result))
+        # Safe expressed as unicode rather than str
+        result = urllib.quote(quote_by_default, safe=u"<>")
+        self.assertEqual(quote_by_default, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (quote_by_default, result))
+        # "Safe" non-ASCII bytes should still work
+        # (Technically disallowed by the URI standard, but allowed for
+        # backwards compatibility with previous versions of Python)
+        result = urllib.quote(b"a\xfcb", safe=b"\xfc")
+        expect = b"a\xfcb"
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" %
+                         (expect, result))
+        # Same as above, but with 'safe' as a unicode rather than str
+        # "Safe" non-ASCII unicode characters should have no effect
+        # (Since URIs are not allowed to have non-ASCII characters)
+        result = urllib.quote(b"a\xfcb", safe=u"\xfc")
+        expect = urllib.quote(b"a\xfcb", safe="")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" %
+                         (expect, result))
+        # Same as above, but quoting a unicode rather than a str
+        result = urllib.quote(u"a\xfcb", encoding="latin-1", safe=b"\xfc")
+        expect = b"a\xfcb"
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" %
+                         (expect, result))
+        # Same as above, but with both the quoted value and 'safe' as unicode
+        result = urllib.quote(u"a\xfcb", encoding="latin-1", safe=u"\xfc")
+        expect = urllib.quote(u"a\xfcb", encoding="latin-1", safe="")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" %
+                         (expect, result))
 
     def test_default_quoting(self):
         # Make sure all characters that should be quoted are by default sans
@@ -406,6 +438,81 @@
                          'alpha%2Bbeta+gamma')
         self.assertEqual(urllib.quote_plus('alpha+beta gamma', '+'),
                          'alpha+beta+gamma')
+        # Test with unicode
+        self.assertEqual(urllib.quote_plus(u'alpha+beta gamma'),
+                         'alpha%2Bbeta+gamma')
+        # Test with safe unicode
+        self.assertEqual(urllib.quote_plus('alpha+beta gamma', u'+'),
+                         'alpha+beta+gamma')
+
+    def test_quote_bytes(self):
+        # Non-ASCII bytes should quote directly to percent-encoded values
+        given = b"\xa2\xd8ab\xff"
+        expect = "%A2%D8ab%FF"
+        result = urllib.quote(given)
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Encoding argument should raise UnicodeDecodeError on bytes input
+        # with non-ASCII characters (just as with str.encode).
+        self.assertRaises(UnicodeDecodeError, urllib.quote, given,
+                            encoding="latin-1")
+
+    def test_quote_with_unicode(self):
+        # Characters in Latin-1 range, encoded by default in UTF-8
+        given = u"\xa2\xd8ab\xff"
+        expect = "%C2%A2%C3%98ab%C3%BF"
+        result = urllib.quote(given)
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Characters in Latin-1 range, encoded by with None (default)
+        result = urllib.quote(given, encoding=None, errors=None)
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Characters in Latin-1 range, encoded with Latin-1
+        given = u"\xa2\xd8ab\xff"
+        expect = "%A2%D8ab%FF"
+        result = urllib.quote(given, encoding="latin-1")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Characters in BMP, encoded by default in UTF-8
+        given = u"\u6f22\u5b57"              # "Kanji"
+        expect = "%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97"
+        result = urllib.quote(given)
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Characters in BMP, encoded with Latin-1
+        given = u"\u6f22\u5b57"
+        self.assertRaises(UnicodeEncodeError, urllib.quote, given,
+                                    encoding="latin-1")
+        # Characters in BMP, encoded with Latin-1, with replace error handling
+        given = u"\u6f22\u5b57"
+        expect = "%3F%3F"                    # "??"
+        result = urllib.quote(given, encoding="latin-1",
+                                    errors="replace")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Characters in BMP, Latin-1, with xmlcharref error handling
+        given = u"\u6f22\u5b57"
+        expect = "%26%2328450%3B%26%2323383%3B"      # "&#28450;&#23383;"
+        result = urllib.quote(given, encoding="latin-1",
+                                    errors="xmlcharrefreplace")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+
+    def test_quote_plus_with_unicode(self):
+        # Encoding (latin-1) test for quote_plus
+        given = u"\xa2\xd8 \xff"
+        expect = "%A2%D8+%FF"
+        result = urllib.quote_plus(given, encoding="latin-1")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote_plus(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
+        # Errors test for quote_plus
+        given = u"ab\u6f22\u5b57 cd"
+        expect = "ab%3F%3F+cd"
+        result = urllib.quote_plus(given, encoding="latin-1",
+                                         errors="replace")
+        self.assertEqual(expect, result,
+                         "using quote_plus(): %r != %r" % (expect, result))
 
 class UnquotingTests(unittest.TestCase):
     """Tests for unquote() and unquote_plus()
diff --git a/Lib/urllib.py b/Lib/urllib.py
index fb98421..e32a771 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib.py
@@ -1193,7 +1193,7 @@
     _safe_map[c] = c if (i < 128 and c in always_safe) else '%{:02X}'.format(i)
 _safe_quoters = {}
 
-def quote(s, safe='/'):
+def quote(s, safe='/', encoding=None, errors=None):
     """quote('abc def') -> 'abc%20def'
 
     Each part of a URL, e.g. the path info, the query, etc., has a
@@ -1213,10 +1213,28 @@
     is reserved, but in typical usage the quote function is being
     called on a path where the existing slash characters are used as
     reserved characters.
+
+    string and safe may be either str or unicode objects.
+
+    The optional encoding and errors parameters specify how to deal with the
+    non-ASCII characters, as accepted by the unicode.encode method.
+    By default, encoding='utf-8' (characters are encoded with UTF-8), and
+    errors='strict' (unsupported characters raise a UnicodeEncodeError).
     """
     # fastpath
     if not s:
         return s
+
+    if encoding is not None or isinstance(s, unicode):
+        if encoding is None:
+            encoding = 'utf-8'
+        if errors is None:
+            errors = 'strict'
+        s = s.encode(encoding, errors)
+    if isinstance(safe, unicode):
+        # Normalize 'safe' by converting to str and removing non-ASCII chars
+        safe = safe.encode('ascii', 'ignore')
+
     cachekey = (safe, always_safe)
     try:
         (quoter, safe) = _safe_quoters[cachekey]
@@ -1230,12 +1248,12 @@
         return s
     return ''.join(map(quoter, s))
 
-def quote_plus(s, safe=''):
+def quote_plus(s, safe='', encoding=None, errors=None):
     """Quote the query fragment of a URL; replacing ' ' with '+'"""
     if ' ' in s:
-        s = quote(s, safe + ' ')
+        s = quote(s, safe + ' ', encoding, errors)
         return s.replace(' ', '+')
-    return quote(s, safe)
+    return quote(s, safe, encoding, errors)
 
 def urlencode(query, doseq=0):
     """Encode a sequence of two-element tuples or dictionary into a URL query string.
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index d86566e..819a401 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -18,6 +18,10 @@
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue 1712522: urllib.quote supports Unicode String with encoding and errors
+  parameter. The encoding parameter defaults to utf-8 and errors to strict.
+  Patch by Matt Giuca.
+
 - Issue #7646: The fnmatch pattern cache no longer grows without bound.
 
 - Issue #9136: Fix 'dictionary changed size during iteration'