ABSTRACT
John Milton’s definition of “marriage” as a “meet and happy conversation” is central to both genres I treat. In Pursuits of Happiness, Stanley Cavell repeatedly invokes the famous definition from Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, “a document” he “take[s] to have intimate implications in the comedy of remarriage” (PH, 58), and the concept of marriage as conversation drives his discussion throughout. The word conversation, indeed, appears sixty-seven times in Cavell’s argument. And there are many more references to talk and exchange and speech and, of course, words. In fact, his introductory chapter is entitled “Words for a Conversation.” Conversation, Cavell maintains and I agree, is central to marriage and central to the critical (philosophical and literary) enterprise.
