Editing Milan (section)

=== Languages and literature ===
{{Main|Milanese literature}}
[[File:Francesco Hayez 040.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Alessandro Manzoni]] is famous for the novel ''[[The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)|The Betrothed]]'' (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of [[world literature]].<ref name="britannica">{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alessandro-Manzoni|title=Alessandro Manzoni &#124; Italian author|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|date=18 May 2023 }}</ref> This novel is a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://manzoni.classicauthors.net/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed1.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718073016/http://manzoni.classicauthors.net/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed/IPromessiSposiOrTheBetrothed1.html|url-status=dead|title=I Promessi sposi or The Betrothed|archivedate=18 July 2011}}</ref>]]

In the late 18th century and throughout the 19th, Milan was an important centre for intellectual discussion and literary creativity. The [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] found here a fertile ground. [[Cesare Beccaria|Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria]], with his famous ''[[Dei delitti e delle pene]]'', and Count [[Pietro Verri]], with the periodical ''Il Caffè'' were able to exert a considerable influence over the new [[middle class|middle-class]] culture.

In the first years of the 19th century, the ideals of the [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]] made their impact on the cultural life of the city and its major writers debated the primacy of Classical versus [[Romantic poetry]]. Additionally, [[Giuseppe Parini]] and [[Ugo Foscolo]] published their most important works, and were admired by younger poets as masters of ethics, as well as of literary craftsmanship.

In the third decade of the 19th century, [[Alessandro Manzoni]] wrote his novel ''[[The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)|I Promessi Sposi]]'', considered the manifesto of Italian Romanticism, which found in Milan its centre; in the same period [[Carlo Porta]], reputed the most renowned local vernacular poet, wrote his poems in [[Lombard Language]]. The periodical ''[[Il Conciliatore]]'' published articles by [[Silvio Pellico]], [[Giovanni Berchet]], [[Ludovico di Breme]], who were both Romantic in poetry and patriotic in politics.

After the Unification of Italy in 1861, Milan retained a sort of central position in cultural debates. New ideas and movements from other countries of Europe were accepted and discussed: thus [[Realism (arts)|Realism]] and [[Naturalism (literature)|Naturalism]] gave birth to prewar Italian movement of ''[[Verismo]]'' in Southern Italy, its greatest ''Verista'' novelist [[Giovanni Verga]] formed in Sicily who wrote his most important books in Milan.

In addition to Italian, approximately 2&nbsp;million people in Northern Italy can speak the [[Milanese dialect]] or other [[Western dialects of Lombard language|Western Lombard]] variation.<ref>{{cite book|last=Coluzzi|first=Paolo|title=Minority language planning and micronationalism in Italy: an analysis of the situation of Friulian, Cimbrian and Western Lombard with reference to Spanish minority languages|date=2007|publisher=New York|location=Oxford|isbn=978-3-03911-041-4|page=260}}</ref>