Grand Guignol

English

Proper noun

Grand Guignol

1. A Parisian theatre which specialized in grotesque and grisly horror shows.
2. (by extension) That which thrives on grotesquery and gore.
   • 1926 June 19 [U.S. publication date in the Illustrated London News], G. K. Chesterton, "Spain and the Color Black", reprinted in, 1991, the Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, volume XXIV, The Illustrated London News, 1926-1928, Ignatius Press, ISBN 0898702941, pages 112-113

     I may remark, in passing, that I did not go to see any bullfights... . But if I had preferred a Grand Guignol thrill to a great experience of a great nation,... .

   • 1987, Simon Watney, "The Spectacle of AIDS", reprinted as chapter 13 of, 1993, Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, Routledge, ISBN 0415905192, page 206

     Hence the incomparably strange reincarnation of the cultural figure of the male homosexual as a predatory, determined invert, wrapped in a Grand Guignol cloak of degenarcy theory, and casting his lascivious eyes-and hands-out from the pages of Victorian sexology manuals and onto "our" children, and above all onto "our" sons.

   • 1993, Florence King, Southern Ladies and Gentlemen, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312099150, page 147

     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.

External links

• Grand Guignol on Wikipedia.Wikipedia