Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett (c. 1855 – 1927) was an Irish-

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

lawyer and scholar who was a pioneer in the field of

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

. Posnett was born in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College in that city.Keith Sinclair
''A History of the University of Auckland''
Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1983, pp. 34-36. Retrieved 28 January 2019. From 1885 until 1890 Posnett held the Chair of Classics and English Literature at the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

although he also examined students in

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

. His works include ''The Historical Method in Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Political Economy'' (1882) and ''The Ricardian Theory of Rent'' (1884), but he is most notable for the 1886 ''Comparative Literature'', "considered today by many scholars as the foundational work for the studies gathered under the same name during the following century". Informed by

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...

and

Social Darwinism Charles Darwin, after whom social Darwinism is named Social Darwinism is a body of pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economi ...

and published as part of the "International Scientific Series" (published by Kegan Paul, London and D. Appleton, New York), it explained the history of literature as occurring contemporaneously with social evolution, from simple and communal to individual and complex. Posnett's work was also much influenced by

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

's concept of ''

Weltliteratur World literature is used to refer to the world's total national literature and the circulation of works into the wider world beyond their country of origin. In the past, it primarily referred to the masterpieces of Western European literature. ...

'' ("world literature"). Apart from Matthew Arnold's use of the phrase "comparative literature" in a letter, Posnett was the first scholar to use it in the English-speaking world. At the time of its publication, the ''Saturday Review'' stated "We find very little interest in Mr. Posnett's 'Comparative Literature.' The arrangement seems by no means well ordered. Heaps of information (not always correct) are 'shot' (like rubbish) all over the place. ... How remote all this is from the study of literature!" In 1890 Posnett resigned and returned to Dublin where he practised as a lawyer. Posnett died on 5 September 1927 in Kingstown, Ireland, with English probate being executed on 5 December of that same year.

References

External links

*
Comparative Literature
', London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886 (International Scientific Series, Vol. L) (full text) {{DEFAULTSORT:Posnett, Hutcheson Macaulay 1850s births 19th-century Irish lawyers New Zealand literary critics Academic staff of the University of Auckland Comparative literature academics 1927 deaths 20th-century Irish lawyers Irish expatriates in New Zealand Lawyers from Dublin (city)