I. L. McClelland is internationally recognized as a key-authority on the ideology and literature of Spain during the Siglo de las Luces (Century of Enlightenment). This valuable work is a product of much primary research into eighteenth-century books, periodicals and documents housed in Spanish libraries and archives. To assist scholars who are not Hispanists, original quotations from such source-material are accompanied by English translations. Key-aspects of Spain's polemical Age of Reason are explained, particularly the uncertain shifts in scientific ideas, the developing confusion of philosophical attitudes, the controversial movements in literary theories, the popular reactions to artistic practices and the disturbed variations in traditional beliefs and social attitudes. Ideological Hesitancy in Spain 1700-1750 should significantly advance scholarly understanding of a critical epoch of transition and upheaval within the history of Europe—a period of productive ferment in science, ideology and society which proved necessarily conducive to the development of our own modern age of civilization.