Meaning of "humours (Elizabethan usage)"?

Question

I'm reading an article about Philip K. Dick written by Roger Zelazny. Zelazny talks about Dick's *Galactic Pot-Healer* and says:> Galactic Pot-Healer -- When the encyclopedia defines a particular creature as the dominant life-form on a certain planet and then points out that the species only consists of one member ... This one is almost whimsical. But not quite. A Philip Dick book can never be categorized that neatly. But this one is a bit special in the focussing of its **humours (Elizabethan usage)** and in the almost pastoral quality of certain sections.I'm confused about what Zelazny means by "humours (Elizabethan usage)". According to what I found on the internet, the word "humour" in Elizabethan time could mean "the characteristics that make up a man's temperament". Is that what Zelazny means?I mean, he talks about how Dick cannot be categorized. Then he says Dick is special in focusing on his characters' temperaments and writing pastorally. I don't see the logic or relation between one thing and another. Can anybody explain the idea for me?

Answer 1

Hi again--

So first, yes, you have the right definition of humours. More specifically, humours are bodily fluids, which were believed to be associated with emotions. To oversimplify, blood=friendliness or enthusiasm, yellow bile = anger, black bile = depression, and phlegm = apathy or boredom. The theory was that good health meant keeping them in balance, and that too much of one was bad for you, and showed up in strange or antisocial behavior. We still use a lot of the vocabulary around this theory even though medicine has advanced quite a bit since then. For example, melancholy comes from the Greek words for black bile.

So it looks as though Zelazny is saying that while most PKD stories can't be described with a single adjective, such as "whimsical" in this case (since like a healthy Elizabethan, their humours are well-balanced), this one book is easier to categorize.