Biography

Stephen J. Milner is Professor of Italian at the University of Manchester, having previously held posts at the University of Bristol and the University of Cambridge. A graduate of History from Cambridge, he undertook his PhD at the Warburg Institute. Amongst his recent publications are The Erotics of Consolation: Distance and Desire in the Middle Ages (2008) co-edited with Catherine Lèglu; At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy (2005) and Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City(2004) co-edited with Stephen J. Campbell. He is currently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Boccaccio for publication on the septcentenary of Boccaccio’s birth in 2013.

Project Summary

This project focuses on the oratorical activity of the leading Florentine patrician Palla Strozzi (1372-1462) through an examination of his collecting, copying, and collation of rhetorically-related material prior to his exile in 1434. The relevant materials are held in the Florentine Archivio di Stato and Biblioteca Nazionale.