ISITT, Larry R. 1945-

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "Eye-sit;" born February 2, 1945, in Spokane, WA; son of Richard F. and Lois Lindell (a telephone operator; maiden name, de la Grange) Isitt; married Mary Kaye Stanley (a homemaker), September 10, 1966. Ethnicity: "English-French." Education: Eastern Washington University, B.A., 1968, M.A., 1985; University of Southern Mississippi, Ph.D., 1996. Politics: Republican. Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES: Home—123 Oak Dr., No. 6, Branson, MO 65616. Offıce—Department of English, College of the Ozarks, Point Lookout, MO 65726. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: College of the Ozarks, Point Lookout, MO, associate professor of English, 1997—. Military service: U.S. Army, Special Forces, 1968-71; served in Vietnam; became captain.

MEMBER: John Milton Society, John Bunyan Society.

WRITINGS:

All the Names in Heaven: A Reference Guide toMilton's Supernatural Names and Epic Similes, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Larry R. Isitt told CA: "Currently I am looking at two areas of theological emphasis. One is John Milton's anti-Trinitarianism (Arianism) as this is found in the unequal names he chose for the Father and Son in Paradise Lost as compared to the names for the Father and Son found in Reformation orthodox confessions of faith. The other is George Eliot's misunderstanding of English Evangelicalism as seen in her depictions of it in her novels when compared with actual Evangelicals such as Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

"I am a Christian, one who has believed in Jesus Christ for my salvation. I believe the Bible to be revelation from God and true in word, thought, history, and the miracles it records. It is from this Bible-centeredness, if I may call my position thusly, that I look at the literature of America and England from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Generally in the West there has been a decline away from Bible-centeredness in culture and in the literary products of that culture toward increasing secularism. Writers have depended less and less on the Biblical world view for their understanding of human nature. My theme, so far as I have one, is to trace this decline in writers such as Milton, Dickens, George Eliot, Emerson, Melville, Frost, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, January, 2003, J. K. Bracken, review of All the Names in Heaven: A Reference Guide to Milton's Supernatural Names and Epic Similes, p. 794.