meta-narrative

In critical theory, and particularly postmodernism, a metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) is an abstract idea that is supposed to be 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". The prefix meta means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and a narrative is a story. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other 'little stories' within totalizing schemas.
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Lyotard 's term.  It means a story or narrative that is presumed to have great generality and represents a final and apodictic truth. Modernists , Lyotard  tells us, believe in metanarratives whereas postmoderns are incredulous of metanarratives.  Postmoderns, in this sense of the term, are eclectic and gather their beliefs from a variety of sources while treating the resulting compilation as tentative.