The Enlightenment Era: John Locke and Mary Astelle

The reading focuses at first on the general changes associated with the enlightenment era in which related to rhetoric. Suggesting the enlightenment era as one which greatly influenced modern rhetoric the reading suggests that “the rhetorical theories of the enlightenment are intimately linked to the intellectual and social developments that shaped the modern world” (Herzberg 792) such as the advent of text. There are still elements of oral literacy that exist today, but nothing like the days before mainstream text. Now someone can pick up a book written hundreds of years ago and hear the author’s thoughts. As I stated in my essay concerning how printed text changed rhetoric, text originally allowed for an aftermarket audience. It still does, but in many ways now more than ever text is seen as a primary medium to reach an audience instead of an aftermarket model.  The reading then goes on to talk about John Locke and his essay concerning human understanding. Though I found his philosophy rather interesting and the subject matter to be very relatable to what we have been learning, the reading of Mary Astelle interested me much more.  Text allowed for people to be anonymous in many cases. Though this sounds like a counterintuitive notion, there were many times throughout history (especially around the time that text arose) that having ones name associated with a controversial issue, speech, or text could mean serious repercussions.

Mary Astell`s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II is just one example of a piece that would not have reached the masses and been influential had she not had the ability to use text as her medium. Astell was a part of the upper middle class until her father died. Since she wasn’t married and the remaining sum of her father’s wealth was put into her brothers schooling, Astell suffered decreased circumstances with her mother and aunt. However, when her mother and aunt died, Astell moved to London in order to pursue a profession as a writer. Though she had trouble at first, she eventually wrote A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II which actually resulted in a positive benefit since her ideas were followed and in some light admired for implementing change for women’s education. And though she was a woman in a time dominated by men, when she created a proposal for reviving women’s education, her “proposal established her reputation for wisdom and eloquence well beyond her immediate circle” (Herzberg 842). Since she was a woman many of her books “made her the butt of satire from misogynists of the day, both on stage and in print” (Herzberg 843). This was because her use of text to reach the masses also allowed for those in disagreement to pick apart her arguments without her own ability to really defend herself. This is a recurring theme with the emergence of text in rhetoric. How do we truly understand a context and meaning of something if not received directly from the author?

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical times to the Present. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print.