Like a Captive Bird examines the use of psychagogy, a set of therapeutic principles for achieving virtue, in Plutarch's work. Warren argues that Plutarch's work makes use of moral-educational literature to inculcate a gendered sense of self in the reader, and that this self is fundamentally concerned with the sex of the body, its reproductive role, and the conjugal relationship. Psychagogy is therefore a process of self-formation which aims to regulate and distribute power in gendered interactions on the basis of virtue. On this view, virtue is not just a disposition of the soul, it is also a set of rules and regulations for how one should act and interact with others, and this ties it inextricably to gender. Plutarch furthers this view in his theoretical-philosophical work, where he moves beyond the gender binary to a psychic scale of gender expression which figures normative gender as virtuous and non-normative gender as vicious. He then examines the implications of these views in the biographies. Warren therefore holds that Plutarch's views on women and gender across all genres are ideologically |