My point is that its central consciousness—its profound understanding of class and gender as shaping influences on people’s lives—owes much to that earlier literary heritage , a heritage that, in general, has not been sufficiently valued by most contemporary literary critics .
解析:句首的 it 是形式主语,其具体内容是从 that 开始到句子结束的全部内容。 That 从句中,主语 a historian 之后修饰它的超长的定语从句是这个句子难以读懂的原因。 Compare crime rateswith crime rates 中间被修饰第一个 crime rates 的两个修饰成分 per thousand in a European city in one decade of the fifteenth century 分隔得很远。在 with 之后的第二个 crime rates 后面,省略了与前面重复的 per thousand in a European city。