Sounds of Fury: The Aural Poetics of the Voice and Imperial Violence in Cervantes’ Mediterranean PAUL MICHAEL JOHNSON DePauw University, Indiana Sed quid ego imbelli cythara, quid proelia tento? (But why do I try to sing of battles with a lyre not suited for war?) 1 One of the clearest manifestations of the sheer power of poetry emerges in the concept of furor poeticus, the (Neo-)Platonic notion that divine inspiration was responsible for prosodic genius. Though its potency was to wane throughout the Renaissance as it gave way to increasing emphasis on human technique, application and ingenuity or ingenio, many humanists of the era, including Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo and Bernardo Tasso, would continue to reference the importance of furor poeticus and conserve a role for the Muses in poetic composition. Miguel de Cervantes alludes to the concept at length in his La Galatea and Viaje del Parnaso, and in a frontispiece for an eighteenth-century edition of Don Quijote, the so-called Lord Carteret’s edition, it is given visual form. 2 In this neoclassical reimagining, we see a sinewy Cervantes as an unlikely Hercules Musagetes, donning the mask of satire en route to slaying the monsters—that is, the ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/23/2–3/000369-24 © 2023 Bulletin of Spanish Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2023.2176093 1 Pompeo Arnolfini, ‘Lucens Carmen Ioanni Austriaco Victori Dicatum’ (‘A Shining Song for the Victor, John of Austria’) (1572), in The Battle of Lepanto, ed. & trans. Elizabeth R. Wright, Sarah Spence & Andrew Lemons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 2014), 176–93 (pp. 190–91). 2 On the concept of furor in Cervantes’ writing, see Felipe Valencia, ‘Furor, industria y límites de la palabra poética en La Numancia de Cervantes’, Criticón, 126 (2016), 97–110; and Georges Güntert, ‘Arte y furor en La Numancia’, in Actas del VIII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: 22–27 agosto 1983, ed. A. David Kossoff et al., 2 vols (Madrid: Istmo, 1986), I, 671–83. Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume C, Numbers 2–3, 2023