Ridere con le Muse: alcune riflessioni sul riso nella biografia letteraria di Archiloco nell’iscrizione di Mnesiepe

The legendary encounter between the poet Archilochus and the Muses is one of the most interesting episodes related by the epigraph of Mnesiepes. It has been linked by many scholars to the legendary traditions of poetic initiations, perhaps with allusions to Archilochus' own work. The laughter of the Muses and the mockery of Archilochus - as well as being understood as references to the cult of Demeter or to iambic poetry - could be associated with a structural role of laughter as a mediating element in the relationship with the stranger. Through the anthropological perspective of Fabio Ceccarelli's theory of laughter, this article aims to show that this episode assigns a specific cohesive meaning to laughter, linking the divine and the human worlds in order to allow a relationship of equal exchange between the two different realities.