Plutarch'S 'Contrastive life histories': the verbal art and literary polemics with the canon

The article deals with the ways and methods used to create characters and personages in Plutarch's Contrastive Life Histories. A special attention is paid to the mutual connexion between the general idea of the work and its didactic form. The ideo-thematic and genre features of the work testify to Plutarch's innovative trends in creating the history personified of the antiquity and ruining the canonic views of the outstanding personalities of the epoch when composing fictional biographies.