LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Index to Student Research Projects

Robin P. Stone
LITR 4232
Craig White
April 18, 2002

Journal - The Concord Circle

Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Revolution took place in 1776. By 1830, the birth of the nation was complete and the government was securely in power. America began to see the effects of this new identity in cultural changes. The settlement of the land was progressing and stratification of the classes grew wide. The upper class landowners began to develop their own ways and means of socializing according to the new values. No longer was conformity valued in the same way. The old values were carried over to a degree but the individualism and independence had left their mark. This can be seen most markedly in the advent of an Intellectual Society that grew out of the upper class as the stratification or separation of the classes continued. No longer did the upper class gentlemen and ladies have the same wild frontiers to challenge them. The desire to quest and explore the land was transformed by the Intellectual Society, including Emerson, The Concord Circle, and the Literati of the early nineteenth century, into a quest and challenge to explore the mind of man.

In the Intellectual Society, the individualism and independence held much greater sway. Artists, in every society, tend to reflect the coming changes of the culture and people long before the population as a whole. The Literati of the early nineteenth century are an excellent example of this. The coming capitalist revolution of the economy, as well as the explosion of the sciences and technology can all be heard dimly in the works and words of the poets and writers of the early nineteenth century. Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself sang of the values of individualism: I matter; I value myself. Dylan Thomas’ Go Not Gently into that Good Night spoke of the fierce fighting spirit and independence over death. Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil challenges conformity and dares the people to do so as well.

The group consciousness of the American people was growing and expanding. The Literati took into themselves those things that reflected and supported their values and ideas:  The philosophical writings of Kant, Transcendentalism, Universalism, etc. They began to meet to discuss such thing and explore the “new” frontiers. One such group was the Concord Circle (Lang).

It all started when a group of writers in Concord, and nearby Boston, embarked on an adventure, with like-minded friends to discuss deep, conceptual topics such as literature, philosophy, and religion. This group, first dubbed the “Hedge Club” after member F. H. Hedge, later became known as the “Transcendental Club” by those not in the group due to their discussions of the ideas that Kant put forth about “transcendence.” Transcendentalism is a literary, as well as philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, maintaining the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends all things empirical and scientific and that it is attainable through intuition.

Transcendentalism blossomed in England with a group of Literati who took the writings of the German metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, as well as English authors such as Carlyle and Wordsworth, and combined it with Chinese and Indian religious ideals in search of a philosophy to call their own. Growing in popularity among the English Literati, Transcendentalism combined the world of the senses with the world that is beyond the senses. It elevated feeling and intuition over scientific reasoning and exalted the worth of the individual over society. In Transcendentalism, intellectual companionship is the goal, and reliance and trust are placed in the self, not in others. Spiritual living was paramount and a person’s relationship with God was between that person and God, with no intermediation or ritualism necessary. Transcendentalism rejects custom, habit, and anything from the past, calling for newness, individualism, and uniqueness. It teaches delight in “getting back to nature,” manual labor, and revolutionary action as ennobling ideas. Singing as it did of the emerging American ideals; Transcendentalism had a great impact upon the writers of the Concord Circle.

The members of this group of friends grew to include well-known personages such as Amos Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman, among others. This group met in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, called “The Old Manse” in Concord, and eventually became known as the “Concord Circle.” In the following pages, we will be discussing the Concord Circle. We will be focusing on those who belonged to The Circle, their lives, their beliefs, their writings, and the impact they had. From 1840 until 1844, these writers had voice in a journal, called The Dial, which was edited by Margaret Fuller and Emerson himself. One can only imagine the impact that the articles in The Dial had once it carried the writers’ voices to those around them. Most certainly it would have evoked many thoughtful discussions.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the seed of the Concord Circle, was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803 to William Emerson, a minister of First Unitarian Church and Ruth Haskins Emerson. Emerson’s father died in 1811, at the age of forty-two, when Emerson was merely seven years old. Mrs. Emerson and her four sons started attending the church of William Ellery Channing. Emerson, who did not get along well with the other children his age, was always bookish and by 1814, when he was only eleven, was reading books in French. Emerson’s aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, encouraged him in his independent thinking and, from 1817 until 1821, he studied at Harvard where he started journaling.

Emerson went on to Harvard Divinity School but his health dwindled due to tuberculosis and he had to drop out in 1825. In 1826, he was licensed to preach but had to migrate south due to his health. In 1828, he entered the ministry and preached at Old Second Church (also known as Old North Church), and in December, married 17-year-old Ellen Louisa Tucker. In 1830, Emerson began actively writing and lecturing for a living. He lost his desire to preach after Ellen died from tuberculosis in February of 1831 at only 19 years of age. Emerson resigned the pastorate in 1832 and later sailed to Europe where he met with Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge helped Emerson form his own philosophy . . .the very philosophy that had such a major impact on the other members of the Concord Circle.

In 1834, Emerson returned to New England, and one year later, married Lydia Jackson and settled down in Concord. In 1836, Emerson wrote Nature which was his first piece expressing his beliefs in Transcendentalism. The following year he gave a speech at Harvard for Phi Beta Kappa called The American Scholar. In 1838, he gave The Divinity School Address at Harvard, and because of this speech, he was thought to be renouncing Christianity. He was not invited back for 28 years; but when he was invited back, he received an LL.D. degree.

In 1840, Emerson joined with others in publishing a journal in which the Concord Circle could have their voice heard. This journal, The Dial, was a place for Emerson and his like-minded associates to expounded their ideas and have their words heard on subjects such as Transcendentalism. In 1841, American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau moved into the Emerson home where he stayed until 1843, under the tutelage of Emerson. Emerson published Essays: First Series, which was a culmination of his lectures to date, during this year. From 1842 until 1844, Emerson personally edited The Dial, and in 1844, Emerson’s Essays: Second Series was published. Also during this year his son, Edward Waldo Emerson was born. In 1850, Emerson’s lectures from the years of 1845 to 1847 were published into a work called Representative Men. It was during this lecture time that he became interested in the abolitionist movement. In 1860, Emerson published The Conduct of Life, and in 1870, he published Society and Solitude. In the last years of his life, his mental powers declined, but his literary reputation grew. Emerson died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882, at the age of seventy-eight. He was buried a small elevated section in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, appropriately called Author’s Ridge, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Emerson had become known as “The Sage of Concord” and had been an extremely influential spokesperson for the American philosophers and Literati of the Transcendentalist movement in America. Emerson constantly challenged traditional thought through his poetic prose and his essays based on recurring themes and images. Emerson considered himself a poet even though he had difficulty writing, what, at the time, was considered structurally correct verse. His motto was “Trust Thyself” (Foerster, et al.) and was picked up by other members of The Concord Circle such as Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Thoreau, and Channing. Emerson’s philosophy came to include relying on one’s intuition in order to truly understand reality, maintaining an optimistic attitude, and denying the existence of evil.

 Emerson was not only an American poet, but also an essayist, and a philosopher. As such, he produced works that caused the imagination to soar and the intellect to question. His words evoked thoughts of quests, unknown lands, and exotic frontiers: The very things that brought his forefathers to American Shores. His words flowed from the page into the mind and the soul of the American spirit. As poet, he was considered rough, but he was very effective. As essayist, he was brilliant. His lectures, which formed his essays, were words that embodied the very heart of his teachings and carried the thoughts like music to the ears of those who heard. As philosopher, he taught, guided, and led his followers into delving deeper within themselves in order to develop their own philosophy and not simply follow blindly—lessons the American people had learned in the decades before. Emerson had a way about him that made people take notice. The enthusiasm and the truth that he spoke held his audiences captive. His speeches were magnetic and he believed what he said and wrote: He lived it. America was in its teen years and was looking for that identity. They were looking for someone to lead them to that identity. Emerson was like a mentor to a child who had run away to a foreign country, looking to assimilate into the culture and philosophy. His creation of a philosophy uniquely American both in thought and word defined the blossoming values of the American people—unique and unto themselves.

Emerson’s writings, still today, have the same effect—whether in classrooms across the world, or in homes as pleasure reading—Emerson’s words flow from page to mind and always have an effect. Sometimes the effect is considered negative, as in the Divinity School Address, but most of the time the effect is exactly what Emerson set out to do—make you think rather than accept spoon-fed literature and beliefs. Emerson effectively guided the upper class through his writings, essays, and philosophies to recognize and value his own unique vision of the American spirit. His work with The Dial and the Concord Circle are reflections of his lifelong endeavor to teach that vision.

 

 

Review: Emerson’s Nature: A River Reading

 

This article is about Emerson’s book Nature, in which author Ann Woodlief says, “Emerson distilled his reading into a vision of the complex relationship among man, nature, and language.” Woodleif goes on to explain that in Nature Emerson exhorted his readers, and his followers, to relate themselves to the nature around them in order to learn and become more spiritual. Woodlief also explains how Emerson unveils what is by discovering what is not: By looking at nature, what we are not, such as plants and rivers, we can see a continuous flow and the divine in order to bring our spirit closer to that which is divine. Woodlief states that Emerson’s “abstract” use of metaphor and imagery and how he failed to actually link his imagery to the actual natural elements made it difficult for his readers to find that “flow” between the divine and the human soul, and that this reduced the effectiveness of Emerson’s work. Emerson was a learned man and had enough knowledge of science to go more in depth into the flow of waterways, such as rivers, in order to pull the reader into that flow of the divine that he was hinting at. Woodlief believes this failure to do so came from his fear of water that, to him, represented his father’s authority, which grew out of an unpleasant series of events from his childhood. This fear of water combined with his Utilitarian upbringing caused him to avoid a strong usage of rivers and inhibited the concept of the divine flow of God and man.

Woodlief goes on to explain Emerson’s path of creating harmony between self and nature is achieved by opening oneself to the surroundings and not being caught up with one’s feelings or self. By opening up to whatever comes and not doubting, but seeking the new, the unique, and by not wanting a “higher experience” too much, but relaxing and letting it come, this flow can be found. It cannot be found by force, or actively seeking, but by intuition and opening oneself up to what is already there because they are gifts to be treasured, not commanded. Man, may however, facilitate these experiences by living right which keeps one in tune with nature, thereby participating in the flow continually. Emerson believes that everything in nature is a symbol for something spiritual, thus, to attune oneself with nature, one can attain the spiritual. Another way to facilitate the experience is to think and muse. Thinkers, especially poets, are more likely to “go with the flow” rather than fight against it because they are constantly thinking and musing.

               This article opened up for me a new depth of meaning in Emerson and his work, but more importantly in the entire Concord Circle. No longer were they literary geniuses, or philosophers. They were teachers, guides, and mentors; who, through their writings, could take me deeper into the world of the evolution of a country, history, and life. Through this article, I was able to go deeper into Emerson’s work and do more than sense, but actually feel that flow and the depth at which he wrote.

Biographical Sketches:

The following biographical sketches are of people considered to be part of the Concord Circle, either by attendance, or by friendship with “The Circle” members.

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, at Concord Massachusetts. In 1834, Thoreau moved his family into “Old Manse” with Emerson and decided to devote his time to being a writer. Emerson became the most influential person of Thoreau’s life: his mentor. Thoreau worked as the handyman and Emerson’s assistant while living at “Old Manse,” and he contributed to The Dial. In 1837, he began to journal. This journal would be the source of most of the books published for Thoreau.

On July 4, 1845, he built a small cabin near Walden Pond and lived by doing odd jobs and growing his own food in order to avoid the materialistic life, but left there on September 6, 1847. During this time he was forced to spend a night in jail for failing to pay his taxes and wrote a lecture called “Resistance to Civil Government, which became known as “Civil Disobedience.” This event was a turning point in Thoreau’s life, after which he resisted a government that supported slavery and waged war against Mexico. Thoreau worked to free slaves through the Underground Railroad. He died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862 and was buried on Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was an individualist who wrote against materialism and social conformity of any kind. Thoreau’s willingness to live off the land and grow his own food set an example for the other members of The Concord Circle because he walked the walk as well as talking the talk, not only in the attunement of nature, but also in the philosophies of Transcendentalism. His works include Walden, and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Three more works of Thoreau’s were published posthumously: Life without Principle, Excursions, and The Maine Woods.

               Amos Bronson Alcott was born in 1799 near Wolcott, Connecticut. He had little formal education but learned much through reading while working different small jobs. He opened Temple School in 1834 in Boston. His assistant was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and they both sought to integrate the mental, physical, and spiritual development of children through education and social reform. The School folded in the United States, but Alcott House, a school in England based on his theories, was a success. He was involved in the Transcendentalist movement and wrote for The Dial. He was a member of the experimental living community of Brook Farm and a co-founder of a vegetarian community called “Fruitlands” near Harvard, Massachusetts that only lasted a year. His works include: Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction, Record of a School, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Louisa May Alcott was born in 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania to Amos Bronson Alcott. She was educated by her father and was friends with both Emerson and Thoreau. She was worked as a servant and seamstress to bring money into the household until her books started selling. Her letters to her family were compiled into Hospital Sketches in 1863, and the following year she wrote Moods. In 1868 she wrote Little Women, which is biographical in nature. In is interesting to note that her very first book, Flower Fables, was written as a set of tales to entertain Emerson’s daughter. Other works include: Good Wives, Little Men, and Eight Cousins.

               Orestes Augustus Brownson was born on September 16, 1803 in Stockbridge, Vermont. Brownson was a self taught Minister who started Presbyterian, became a Universalist, then a Unitarian, and ended up Catholic. He wrote on social and religious questions through sermons, lectures, and speeches. He founded and edited the Boston Quarterly Review from 1838 until 1842, and then edited the Democratic Review from 1842 until 1844, during which time he became involved in the Transcendentalist movement from hearing Channing’s sermons, and even sent his son to live at Brook Farm. In 1844, he became Catholic and started writing against other beliefs. He died on April 17, 1876, in Detroit, Michigan. His other works are: New Views of Christianity, Society and the Church; The American Republic; and two autobiographical works called Charles Elwood also known as The Infidel Converted, and The Convert. Sarah Margaret Fuller was born on May 23, 1810 in Cambridgeport Massachusetts. At 25 years of age, her father died and she had to teach school for a living until 1839. During this time she wrote for The Dial and then from 1840 until 1842 she edited the Dial and was a leader in Transcendentalism, though she was not a member of Brook Farm. As an ardent feminist, she worked to enrich the lives of women and their place in society. She served as the first woman foreign correspondent of the New York Tribune from the United States. In 1847, Fuller sailed to Rome where she met and married Marchesse Ossoli, and took part in the Revolution of 1848-1849. She, her husband, and her son died in a shipwreck, just of the US coast, while sailing from Italy to the United States on July 19, 1850.

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily never professed to an organized religion and lived most of her life in Amherst at her family home, unmarried. Dickinson was a poet whose themes were primarily nature, love, death, and immorality. Most of her poems were published after her death. Frederick Douglass, who was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on a plantation in 1817 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He escaped in 1838, took a new name—Frederick Douglass—and became an abolitionist and journalist. He died in 1895. His works include Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His father, a sea captain, died at sea when Hawthorne was four years old and his mother took him and his sisters to live with her family. Hawthorne used allegory and symbolism to search, question, and seek in the Transcendentalist style. He joined Brook Farm for a short time, but felt the manual labor interfered with his writing. He died May 19, 1967 in Plymouth, New Hampshire. His works include The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.

Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island. In 1862, Whitman went to Fredericksburg to care for a younger brother who had been wounded in the war and nursed the wounded in and around Washington for three years. In 1873, Whitman was stricken with paralysis and lived in Camden, New Jersey until his death in 1892. He achieved a new poetic form, which is now known as Free Verse. His works include: Leaves of Grass, The Good Gray Poet, and Democratic Vistas. George Ripley, born in Greenfield, Massachusetts on October 3, 1802, attended Harvard Divinity School and entered the Unitarian ministry. A leader in the Transcendentalist Movement, Ripley contributed to The Dial and resigned from the ministry in order to help form Brook Farm. Ripley co-authored with F.H. Hedge and headed the first regular book review department of a newspaper in the United States. He died on July 4, 1880 in New York. His works include Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature. John Burroughs, an American naturalist and writer, was born in Roxbury, New York, in 1837 on a farm. He studied fruit culture and literature, traveled the world recording natural phenomena in simple prose, and eventually became known as the “Sage of Slabsides.” He died in 1921. His works include: Walt Whitman, Poet and Person; Wake Robin; Locusts and Wild Honey; Signs and Seasons; and Time and Change.

Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish essayist and historian born in 1795, saw the physical world as a covering for the spiritual world in an orderly universe and was completely against materialism. In 1832 Emerson went to Craigenputtock where Carlyle was and began a lifelong friendship. Carlyle influenced many as a social critic until his death in 1881. His works include: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, The Heroic in History, Past and Present, Chartism, Life of John Sterling, and Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. William Ellery Channing, born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780, was a United States Unitarian preacher, writer, and reformer who opposed slavery as well as violence in the abolitionist movement. Channing was the key figure in the quiet change of Churches moving from the orthodoxy of Calvinism to the liberalism of Unitarian. He died in 1842. The clarity and conviction of his sermons and essays put him as leader and brought much controversy. His nephew, also named William Ellery Channing, born in 1818, was a poet and Transcendentalist who was friends with members of the Concord Circle. He died in 1901. His works include a collection of poems, called Poems.

Lydia Maria Child, an American author was born in Medford Massachusetts, in 1802, was against slavery—subject she wrote much about—and published the first monthly for children in America. Child died in 1880. Her works include: National Anti-Slavery Standard a weekly paper, Letters from New-York; Frugal Housewife, and several historical novels. Daniel Chester French born in Exeter, New Hampshire on April 20, 1850, was a sculptor of public monuments that are unsurpassed today. May Alcott, Louisa’s sister, was one of his teachers. French died October 7, 1931. His works include the Minute Man in Concord Massachusetts, Mourning Victory commemorating the first New Englanders to fall in the American Revolution, and the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. F. H. Hedge, born in 1805 in Cambridge Massachusetts was an American Unitarian clergyman and author was educated in Germany as well as at Harvard. In 1836 he joined Emerson in the forming of the Transcendentalist Club, which became the Concord Circle. His works include Christian Examiner, Reason in Religion, and Prose Writers of Germany. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was born 1804, in Billerica, Massachusetts. She was sister-in-law of Hawthorne, taught under Alcott, opened a bookstore where Margaret Fuller held conversation classes, and opened one of the first American Kindergartens in 1860. After her death in 1894, a memorial settlement was established called the Elizabeth Peabody House. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, in 1831, was a journalist, author, and philanthropist, who helped found the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, the Clarke School for Deaf Mutes, and the National Prison Association. Sanborn lived in Concord, and died in 1917. His works include biographies of many of the members of the Concord Circle. Jones Very was born in 1813, in Salem, Massachusetts. He had a mystic experience in 1838 and wrote many religious sonnets and lyrics, which he claimed were directed by the Holy Spirit. Emerson published many of his poems. Very died in 1880.

 Each of these people contributed to the development of Emerson’s vision to awaken the world to the riches and challenges of the new frontier—the mind and heart of man—all found in the American Dream. Their views of politics, religion, society, and literature filtered through the New England Literati to the common man in a flow that continues today. These writers, who, choosing to limit their conformity to society to that which was needed to support themselves, and to commune with nature, had a different outlook on life that materialized in their writing. They saw the flow of the divine in the life cycle of nature, and they wrote about it. Through lectures, poetry, prose, narratives, sermons, art, classes, and many other techniques, they reached society with a new philosophy and vision.

 In conclusion, what this research has led me to realize, is that The Concord Circle was not a thing: it was a concept. Assuredly, it was a physical group of people who gathered together to share, relate, and explore beliefs and concepts, but it was much more than that. The Concord Circle was a river, flowing through the course of history and life in which Emerson, seeing the natural flow of the divine, picked up small pebbles along the bank of life. These pebbles were his followers, he carried them through a current of exploration, knowledge, and spiritual growth that started well before the civil war, when turmoil was abounding and the young country was seeking, and which is still flowing today through his works and the works of his followers.

This journal has opened a complete realm to me that was unknown before. Woodlief brings up the point in her article “Emerson’s Nature: A River Reading” that “the repeated association of flowing water with Emerson’s most Transcendental premises in Nature has not been fully explored.” This will be one of the first things I will start researching for further studies; because I believe Emerson saw, or rather felt that natural flow of the divine that is evident in nature, especially in water, but also in all aspects of the life cycle. I believe Emerson was not only trying to define that for himself but also show that concept to others. His followers in the Concord Circle also sensed this flow. Emerson himself was this flow for the group that surrounded him: He was the current and they the waters.

I will start this pursuit of knowledge by rereading Emerson’s works and the works of all members of the Concord Circle with a new perspective. I will look for that specific flow of the divine that is so prevalent in nature and the life cycle in the representation of their works. I will try to draft a raft if you will, to bridge the abstract metaphors and imagery of Emerson with the works of the others and especially using the river analogy to explore that flow, whose current I feel. I have found many helpful websites and interesting books, not only on the authors themselves, but on Transcendentalism, and spirituality as well. These topics and further readings will help clarify some of the mysticism of the nature versus spiritual, and a bit more study through the science books will clarify more of the scientific workings of water that Woodleif spoke of in her article. There seems to be a definite play there that I am not scientifically knowledgeable enough yet to truly see.

Another avenue of research that I would pursue is to attempt to contact relatives of The Concord Circle and see how “The Circle” affected the descendents of its members. I would also find current, active followers of the Transcendentalist movement now, both in Europe and in America to see how it has evolved over the years. I would also explore if any of them realize it was linked so closely with the writers of The Concord Circle and how many, if any, of them are familiar with the writers and their works. This topic will give me many hours of enjoyable study to pursue on my own, or even in further papers in my educational career.

 


Bibliography:

Biffle, Christopher. Landscape of Wisdom: A Guided Tour of Western Philosophy. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing, 1999 p.363-367 Kant

Compton’s Encyclopedia. Chicago: Compton’s Learning Company, 1991 Vol. 7: 203-203

 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Encyclopedia.com. 3 February 2002. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/E/Emerson.asp>

Foerster, Norman, et al. Poetry and Prose. 5th ed. Dallas: Haughton Mifflin, 1970

 

Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. New York: Houghton

 

Mifflin, 2002

 

Lang, Kristina Rubin. Personal Interview April 13, 2002

 

Luizzi, Vincent, and McKinney, Audrey. New and Old World Philosophy: Introductory

Readings. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001.

 

Nash, Gary B., Ed. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. New York: 2000

The Old Manse: Concord. The Literary Trail of Greater Boston. <http://www.lit-trail.org/html/oldmanse.html>

Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A Text with Readings. 7th Ed. Detroit: Wadsworth Publishing, 1999. 378, 380-89

Woodlief, Ann M. Emerson’s Nature: A River Reading. English Department, Virginia Commonwealth University. 15 March 2002. <http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/home/eriver.html>.