 These proclamations may seem to suggest that “there is no way out” of creative constructions, or “texts”, or that “art…does not need to point beyond itself” (Bowie 2003: 53), as if romantic aesthetics anticipates central trends in post-modernism and  post-structuralism.[8]  But there are reasons to worry about such a “postmodernist” reading. Some lines in romanticism—skepticism about foundationalist philosophy and system-building, the emphasis on human creation, language, and the role of historicism and hermeneutics—are indeed related to certain strands in postmodernism. But reading romantic aesthetics as proto-postmodernist is limited for a host of reasons.