Schumann`s piano cycles arguably constitute his most original contributions to piano literature; he is usually regarded as the inventor of the piano cycle. For many years, scholars did not recognize the special features of Schumann`s piano cycles and, as a result, subsumed them into several other genres. Piano cycles differ in significant ways from suites, variation sets, program music, or multi-movement pieces, even though the criteria for distinguishing them remain unclear. Although recent studies broaden our understanding of Schumann`s cycles, these studies have not sufficiently filled the obvious gap in our knowledge. One of the difficulties of studying Schumann`s piano cycles is articulating what features make cycles different from pieces with similar arrangements. This paper proceeds in three parts. In the first part, I explore how musicians have perceived and described Schumann`s cycles, and how Schumann`s cycles differ markedly from pieces with similar arrangements. After surveying relevant theoretical studies, I develop a classification scheme that sorts the cycles in several different categories, in order to avoid the confusion inherent in comparing pieces from distinct categories. In the last part of this study, I try to demonstrate the relationship between three types of Schumann`s piano cycles and Romantic literature. In the process, I include detailed analyses of some individual movements from Schumann`s piano cycles.