Dialogue with the other as Potential and Peril in Robinson Crusoe

This essay studies an important scene in the literature of European contact with non-Europeans, Robinson Crusoe's conversion of his man Friday to Christianity, drawing on recent discussion of dialogue within ethnography, and paying particular attention to the presentation of speech. It argues that when Crusoe finds Friday more than a match for him in dialogue he turns away from dialogue, to theological reverie focused on himself and to narrative report of their conversation, fashioning an account in which Christian faith and colonial dominance support each other in the establishment of Crusoe's island kingdom.