metanarratives

Noun

metanarrative (plural metanarratives)

1. A narrative which concerns narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge and offers legitimation of such through the anticipated completion of some master idea; a grand story that is self-legitimizing.
   • The narratives are important in themselves as significant pieces of the metanarrative of suspicion in which activist politics have been embedded since the McCarthy era (with roots much earlier).2004, Sandra Baringer, The Metanarrative of Suspicion in Late Twentieth-Century America, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 18

   Synonyms:

   grand narrative

See all 2 meanings of metanarrative