Parse with me

[radiantfracture]

If you were to read the following two sentences, the subject being Gilgamesh and its effect on the English literary tradition:

Into a canon based in the Bible and the Greek and Latin classics, a religious and a secular canon with a highly developed culture of reception and interpretation grown up around it, entered a new text that belonged, as it were, in both currents and in neither. It was millennia older than either, with elements in common with each, which unsettled our understanding and gave us a sense of the extending, shadowy backstories of our traditions. (Schmidt 4)

--would you say that "both currents" refers to the Bible and the Greek/Latin tradition?

{rf}

Comments

[larryhammer]

This. Don't do multiply subordinate clauses until you learn how to hinge your antecedents correctly.

[ranunculus]

Dad always said to write to a 5th grade education. Most of the time I agree. Once in a while using words with a more precise meaning is warranted, but, just because you know the words doesn't mean you should use them.
As for the Gilgamesh epic, it is a great old story. It should serve to remind us that all peoples have such stories and that such stories reach back into the misty dawn of our species. What I wonder about is what the stories told by Neanderthal, Denisovan and other humans were like. How did they differ from the stories told by Modern humans? Were they really similar, love, hate and the lust for power?

[larryhammer]

Thus the importance of anthropological SF.