Ricoeurian Pamela’s Narrative Identity: A Feminist Existentialism Analysis

The most brilliant aspect of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is its epistolary aspect. The protagonist of the novel, Pamela, is the sole narrator of the novel through her letter writing and composing poetry to various addressees, and it can be best explained by Paul Ricoeur’s intensio anime and distensio anime in narration. Such explanation clarifies the relationship between existentialism, feminism and literature through distensio anime from one hand, and, it represents intensio anime through Pamela’s letter writing and love poems, on the other. In the meantime, Ricoeur is among those contemporary narratologists who believe ethics to be originated from narrative cohesion and narrative identity and he puts emphasis on the role of ethics and morality in narration. The aim of the present study is to explain intensio anime and distensio anime in narration and their effect on Pamela’s ethical narrative identity cohesion in existential feminist scope. The methodology in this study is descriptive-analytical.