Humour

Humour is a term in literature for the basic characteristic of a human being. The term is derived from the ancient medicine. The four humours are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and the black bile. Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460 BC - 370 BC) developed the idea that the right balance and purity of these four metabolic agents are essential to maintaining good health. Blood is influenced by element air, phlegm by water, yellow bile by fire, and black bile by earth. He believed that excess of blood or air makes a person sanguine, excess of phlegm or water makes phlegmatic, excess of yellow bile or water makes choleric, and excess of black bile makes melancholic. Blood is Hot and Wet, or Warm and Moist. The Phlegmatic humor is Cold and Wet. The Choleric humor or yellow bile is Hot and Dry. Black Bile is Cold and Dry.

Up to the medieval age it was believed that the humours are responsible for fundamental character of a person. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) used this concept in his plays while Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637) wrote plays titled 'Every Man in his Humour' and 'Every Man out of his Humour'.

There is also a different humour in literature denoting the works that are comic and amusing. It is defined distinctly from wit, and defined as "a warm, tender, fellow-feeling with all that exists," as "the sport of sensibility and, as it were, the playful, teasing fondness of a mother for a child" ... as "a sort of inverse sublimity exalting into our affections what is below us,... warm and all-embracing as the sun."