Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Lajos Szőke: Anglica vetera in the Archdiocesian Library of Eger

two astronomers, M. Hell from Vienna and N. Maskelyne from Greenwich, the observatory had all the necessary conditions for quality work, research and teaching (Kelényi 1930. 16). Later, at the beginning of the XlXth century the director of the Eger observatory Pál Tittel studied in the English observatories and personally procured some books from England. Unfortunately, the Eger observatory was unable to keep pace with the development of astronomy. The book collection dating from the XVIIIth century, however, reflects the contemporary level of astronomy, mathematics and other related sciences. Linguistics The language of the English books discussed in our paper changes according to the development of the language from the last centuries of Early Modem English to the first century of Late Modern English. Though all major changes had already taken place in the previous centuries, there were plenty of minor innovations that brought about later developments in this period. The greatest changes concerned not so much the language itself, but its written form, the orthography. Well after the first printed books, it was still without authorized codification in the XVIth century. The break with the earlier tradition of the phonetical principle led to a continually widening discrepancy between letter and sound. Early Modern English was not fixed and alterations of the orthography reflected the individual tastes of writers and publishers as well (Rot 1992. 317). The lack of a fixed standard was complicated by the fact that standardizing only started in the XVIth century. It was the language of the Bible and other liturgical books (see the theological collection of the Library) which influenced the formation of the literary standard. In later centuries the language of the Church, however, stayed behind the development of the English language. The archaic grammatical forms and spelling system, so much characteristic of language use in church, seemed to be maintained intentionally. Being a part of the religious symbolic system, the liturgical language could not alter without affecting the meaning of the whole. For a long time it was the symbolic system as a whole which preserved the language in its XVIIth century form. Although attempts at phonetic spelling were rejected in all printed material, the English liturgical language differed significantly from the standards of literature. The retained archaic features in all levels of the language indicated the functionally different use of English. In this way two contradictory principles coexisted in it, the desire to be simple and easy to understand and the tendency to preserve the archaic features of the language. Albeit the Library collected the various English 144