In this highly suggestive work, Philip Silver confronts and corrects the entire critical tradition on Spanish romanticism and suggests a new "restitutional" theory of that period in Spanish cultural and political history.

Philip W. Silver, Professor of Spanish at Columbia University, is one of the foremost scholars, editors and translators of Spanish literature, particularly in the area of contemporary Spanish poetry, the poetry of Luis Cernuda, Ortega y Gasset's philosophy, and recent Spanish politics. His publications include a translation of Fictive Discourse and the Structures of Literature, by Felix Martinez-Bonati (Cornell University Press, 1981) and his original study Luis Cernuda: el poeta en su levenda (Castalia, 1996).