A metanarrative from meta grand narrative, in critical theory and particularly postmodernism, is an abstract idea that is thought to be[who?] a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge. According to John Stephens, it “is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience”.[1] The prefix meta- means “beyond” and is here used to mean “about”, and narrative is a story constructed in a sequential fashion. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other “little stories” within conceptual models that make the stories into a whole.In postmodern philosophy, a metanarrative is an untold story that unifies and totalizes the world, and justifies a culture’s power structures. Examples of these stories are nationalisms, religion, and science, to name a few. Metanarratives are not usually told outright, but are reinforced by other more specific narratives told within the culture.In communication and strategic communication, a master narrative or metanarrative is a “transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture.”[2] A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a “coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form.”[2]

via Metanarrative – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.