What is a Meta-narrative?(you need a body to be a post)

[Roger Odisio]

At 04:22 PM 2/25/1999 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:
>It seems to me that Paul is playing games by almost deliberately
>implying an obvious falsity: that upholders of meta-narrativeS
>necessarily uphold some one meta-narrative, which would be
>absurd.
>
>The closest I can think of to such an all-encompassing single
>meta-narrative would be that implied in Paul's organizational
>label, "Reason and Democracy," which is either an utter
>triviality or a claim to a meta-narrative that out metas even
>that of Jerry Falwell.
>
>Carrol

Carrol, Paul, Angela, Yoshii or anyone:  Maybe you could help me assess the
usefulness of the term meta-narrative if you would explain the difference
between meta-narrative, theory, and paradigm, as you understand those terms.