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Definition of grand guignol in English English dictionary
- That which thrives on grotesquery and gore
Everything quickly gets impossibly sensitive, aesthetic, ethereal, and opaquely lovely, yet there is a Grand Guignol thread running through it all that results in constant ominous tension, as though something dreadfully beautiful is going to happen at any moment—i.e., the author is going to turn queer.
- A Parisian theatre which specialized in grotesque and grisly horror shows
- Short plays of violence, horror, and sadism popular in 20th-century Parisian cabarets. The name probably derives from the violent plots that featured the puppet Guignol. The plays were performed mainly at the Théâtre du Grand Guignol from 1897 to 1962. The genre was introduced into England in 1908, but it remained mainly a Parisian theatrical form
- a play of a macabre or horrific nature