Interpretation of the word ‘Romantic’ continues to provide students of literature not only with a fertile source of ideas but also, more disconcertingly, with a bewildering array of contradictory statements. The modern academic meaning is not as exact as we might wish, as the welter of conflicting definitions collected by Lilian Furst in her useful introduction to the European movement amply demonstrates. Unfortunately, understanding of the character and meaning of Romanticism in Spain has been more than usually hampered by problems of definition. Those literary histories published in the nineteenth century offered little analysis of the broader influences which affected the development of Spanish Romanticism, and the first serious assessment of the movement's theoretical bases was provided by the dedicated labours of Edgar Allison Peers. He detected two specific trends: the recovery of national literary tradition and the trenchant opposition to neo-Classical formalism. For Peers, the gestation period of the Spanish movement was long, but the triumph of Romanticism short-lived. A high point was reached between 1834 and 1837, but Romanticism was subsequently rejected in favour of a ‘middle way’ which he denominated Eclecticism. In retrospect, a major shortcoming of Peers's theory was its failure to take into account the extra-literary considerations essential to a full understanding of Romanticism. Subsequent criticism has in fact dealt principally with the relationship between the literary movement and contemporary ideological and philosophical concerns.