Profile
Intern, Historical Linguistics and Literature
Ghent University
Email: Tim.Ongenae@UGent.be
Tim Ongenae holds a Bachelor’s degree in Latin and English Linguistics and Literature at Ghent University and is currently enrolled in the Master’s programme in Historical Linguistics and Literature at the same institution. During the academic year 2019-2020, he is an intern in the RELICS research group.
“Perhaps the true reason why I started to study Latin literature and linguistics at an academic level, is my fascination for the omnipresence of the Latin tradition in European (literary) history and the reception of Latin classics in post-classical periods.
For my Bachelor’s dissertation last year, “The Hunter as a Narrative Element within Orion’s Myth” (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nadia Sels), I made a structural analysis of the representation of the myth of Orion in classical Greek and especially classical Latin literature. This dissertation compelled me to familiarize myself with a considerable amount of pagan Greek and Latin primary sources and broadened my interest in the classical tradition.
Although my Bachelor’s dissertation focused exclusively on classical texts, I am also interested in postclassical Latin literature and European literature. For example, I have done a summer job for three years at Corpus Christianorum of Brepols Publishers, where I had to input Latin texts in the online database Library of Latin Texts (both A and B), which can be consulted online at brepolis.net. During this job, I worked on a wide variety of Latin texts dating from late antiquity up until the late 18th century. My work for this database made me wonder why Latin was able to persist for such a long period in European history as a non-native language.
In the year of my internship, I intend to write my Master’s dissertation on the De Bello Troiano of Joseph of Exeter (a 12th-century epic poem) and especially on the contrast between Greece and Troy, while comparing Joseph of Exeter with other “matter of Troy” poetry from approximately the same period. I hope my contribution to RELICS’ daily activities will lead to a fruitful exchange and will offer me the opportunity to understand the survival of Latin as a non-native literary language in European history more profoundly.”
RELICS 