This paper points out some specific receptions and readings that the Spanish fin de siècle gave to Cervantine texts that diverge from those studied by Anthony Close in The Romantic Approach to Don Quixote (1977). I argue that there were three different readings of Cervantes's texts in this period: the esoteric (Nicolás Díaz de Benjumea and his followers), the hermeneutical (Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Américo Castro), and finally, the philological (Rodríguez Marín, León Máinez, etc.), founded on academic grounds and positivist tools. It is my contention that the latter represented an attempt to maintain Cervantes studies firmly within the realm of modernity, thereby removing them from the domain of ¿premodern¿ readings