The liveliest polemics around Spanish literature that took place during the last three decades of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth were originated within a European context, and were linked by a significant continuity that would affect different phases of the beginnings of Spanish literary historiography. The notions of the Golden Age ( Siglo de Oro ) and the poetic canon, both read in terms of the political premises of the new liberalism and the recent concept of nation, played a crucial role in these polemics. In particular, some English hispanists from this period defended a vision of Spanish literary history that privileged the Middle Ages, as opposed to the Golden Age, as it...