metanarrative

Etymology

From meta- (“transcending; of a level above”) + narrative (“recitation of a story”).

adj

  1. Of or relating to a metanarrative.

noun

  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).”