metanarrative

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English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

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

Noun[edit]

metanarrative (plural metanarratives)

  1. (critical theory) 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.
    • 2004, Sandra Baringer, The Metanarrative of Suspicion in Late Twentieth-Century America‎[1], Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 18:
      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).
    • 2009, William E. Marsh, Nothingness, Metanarrative, and Possibility, AuthorHouse, page 199:
      Even the richest metanarratives of finitude cannot ultimately explain themselves, for they have no way to synoptically do so: a larger metanarrative, one rooted in the metaphysical, is required.
    • 2014, David Bolt, The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Re-reading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing, University of Michigan Press, page 130:
      That is not to say that Snakewalk departs from the metanarrative of blindness completely, or even substantially, but rather that it contains much detail that is evidently informed by experiential knowledge.

Synonyms[edit]

  • (narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge): grand narrative

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Further reading[edit]

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