Introduction & Overview of The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Grand Inquisitor Introduction

"The Grand Inquisitor" was originally published as the fifth chapter of the fifth book of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, his last and perhaps his greatest work. Dostoevsky died just months after the novel was published, and he did not live to see the peculiar situation of his novel's most famous chapter being excerpted as a short story—something he did not intend. A further peculiarity arises from the fact that the story is not excerpted the same way every time, so that whole paragraphs of the novel may be included or excluded from the short story, according to each editor's sense of how best to make the part seem like a whole.

The legend of the Grand Inquisitor is a story within a story. Jesus returns to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition and is arrested. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that he is...
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