This chapter offers new arguments against existing accounts of the essence of literature and art. Although these approaches have made significant contributions to understanding key aspects of the literary and art phenomenon, none tells the full story about the essence of art. I show how the last 300 years of discussion on the matter have mainly revolved around artefact-oriented and receiver-oriented approaches and reassess the implications of the collapse of the poetics of language programme, which was inspired by structuralist work in linguistics – particularly Jakobson’s structural-linguistic programme for literature. Drawing on Chomsky’s programme of universal grammar, Fodor’s work on mental modularity and the language of thought, and Sperber and Wilson’s relevance-theory, as well as on a wide array of experimental findings, I argue that there is no distinct capacity for literary language and that the essence of literature does not reside in the language of the literary text. I also correct the misconception that follows from the collapse of the poetics of language that there is no distinct essence of literature/art: literature/art does have an essence, but its essence isn’t a matter of structure. Finally, I consider intellectual precursors of the creator-oriented theory to be developed in this book.