Friends of the John Rylands

5.45 for 6.15 at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate

Stephen Milner is Serena Professor of Italian in the University School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures and works in the field of late-medieval and Renaissance Italian cultural history with specific interests in the history of rhetoric and the patronage of the Medici Family in Florence.
The talk will focus upon the late Nineteenth-century cult of Dante and its manifestation in Manchester. The Rylands maintained a strong interest in Italy, a fact reflected in the world leading collection of Dante manuscripts and editions currently housed in the library. A particular point of reference will be the activities of the Manchester Dante Society which was founded in 1906, the archive of which was recently rediscovered shedding fascinating light on the way Italy's greatest medieval poet drew together academics, merchants, laymen, and clerics in the city of the satanic mills.