Meaning & use
meta-narrative
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountablespecialist
A large overarching story or belief system that people use to explain history, society or the meaning of events.
Grammar: Countable: the meta-narrative of progress.
Patterns
- the meta-narrative of something
Historians questioned the meta-narrative of constant progress.
Postmodern writers distrust any single meta-narrative.
The film challenges the meta-narrative that hard work always brings success.
nouncountablespecialist
A story within a story that comments on the act of storytelling itself.
Grammar: Used about fiction that is self-aware.
The novel's meta-narrative reveals that the narrator is writing the book.
Critics praised the show's clever meta-narrative.
Word forms
| plural | meta-narratives |
|---|
Common combinations
- grand meta-narrative
- The author rejects any grand meta-narrative of history.
- challenge a meta-narrative
- Her essay challenges the dominant meta-narrative.
- dominant meta-narrative
- The dominant meta-narrative ignores minority voices.
- cultural meta-narrative
- A cultural meta-narrative shapes how we see success.
Synonyms and how they differ
- grand narrative
- Grand narrative is almost the same term, popularized in theory, with a slightly broader feel.
- master narrative
- Master narrative stresses the story told by the powerful, which meta-narrative need not.
- overarching story
- Overarching story is plain English and less theoretical.
Word family
Commonly confused: meta-narrative or metaphor?
meta-narrative vs metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech comparing two things, whereas a meta-narrative is a large story.
Practice
A critic who rejects the meta-narrative of endless progress is rejecting:
Choose one answer.
A meta-narrative is an overarching story. The others are unrelated to broad explanatory stories.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “meta-narrative”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.