Anything I'd ever remembered of John Locke was from my high school AP history class, so it was really rewarding to get a look at him from this perspective. He exerted such considerable influence on our politics, and further research reveals that he essentially invented epistemology. His emphasis on emotional involvement in an argument really drove home the idea that good ethos can help your side better than anything else.
And I continue to be shocked with the number of feminist, gender-defying women pre-20th century. I don't know why I expected history to be filled with pathetic women, but it so refreshing to read about Mary Astell. These women paved the way for themselves as writers, philosophers, and rhetoricians.
She was the "first English feminist," who expressed some fairly forward thinking thoughts, including the idea that a woman must have a successful education if she expects to succeed in marriage (that's a completely modern concept that even contemporary women have a deal of trouble grasping). Astell also breached classic rhetoric and decided instead to use conversational style in her writing to reach out to women of the time, through works as A Serious Proposal for Ladies and Practical Discourses.
The Elocution Movement was probably the single most important element discussed in the reading, since rhetoric and oration fell by the wayside in the wake of scientific thought and logos-based argument. Prior to reading about him, I always thought Francis Bacon was considered a rhetorician by trade, but to read him generally dismissing it as inferior to scientific thought, I was fairly surprised.
All in all, this section shook a lot of my perceptions of this period of history (I'll be sure to call my high school teachers and inform them that we really hardly skimmed the surface).
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