Comentario de texto: the little mermaid

FRAGMENT FROM THE LITTLE MERMAID, BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 1. Summary:
This text, written by Hans Christian Andersen, is a fragment of The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is a well known tale of the infantile literature. The text speaks of a mermaid who is doomed to turn into sea foam. Her sisters give her the ability to avoid it killing with a knife the man she loves. At first she decidesto accept but when she see his face sleeping she only can kiss him. So at last when the sun rises she became into white sparkling foam. After the daughters of the air told her that if she did good deeds for three hundred years she would have a soul to go to heaven, where she could meet his prince.

2. Introduction:
Hans Christian Andersen, (1805-1875) was a Danish author and poet, most famousfor his fairy tales. Although he was very poor he received a university education. His stories are imaginative combinations of universal elements from folk legend. While some reveal an optimistic belief in the ultimate triumph of goodness and beauty others are extremely pessimistic. Part of what makes his tales compelling is the way they identify with the unfortunate and outcast. He also wroteplays, novels, poems, travel books, and several autobiographies. Among his best-known stories "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling". During Andersen's lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed as having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into well over a hundred languages and continue to be published inmillions of copies all over the world.

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3. Text:
External structure of the text It is a narrative composed of several paragraphs interspersed with the dialogue established between The Little Mermaid with her sisters and with the daughters of the air. Internal structure According with distribution of events of the text we can distinguish three parts: Approach (from ``Suddenly she saw hersisters…´´ to ``…they sank beneath the waves.´´) In his first part the Mermaid´s sisters offer her to change her destiny. She can avoid becoming sea foam killing her prince Nude (from ``The little mermaid crept inside…´´ to ``…turned into white sparkling foam.´´) She is going to hurt the prince but she realized that he prefers to die to kill him End (from ``She heard sweet music…´´ to `` … I shalljoin my prince again in Heaven.´´) The daughters of the air explain to the mermaid that she can get a soul in three hundred years. Observing the text with a general sight we can say that it follows the scheme of the Fairy Tale, brief text adapted to the children with a few very simple phrases for his easy compression, adapted to his addressees. In the main the text is descriptive, but we can finddialogs between not more than two prominent figures simultaneously, following the line to facilitate his understanding. Morphosyntactic aspect: Most of nouns are concrete and common (hair, witch, fishtail, dagger, waves…) Also there are some abstract nouns like soul and love. About the adjectives are placed before the name and do not add meaning, are explanatory. The author uses them for literary``little mermaid´´, ``long golden hair´´, ``purple tent´´, ``happy couple´´, ``sweet music´´ and ``delicate shapes´´. There are many verbs to express the characters' actions. This offers the reader feeling of dynamism. Sentences are usually simple and brief, this facilitates
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understanding text. Lexical-Semantic: We find several references about the semantic field of marine world (mermaid,fishtail, sank, waves, sea, sparking foam and floating) Textual aspect: Is a narrative with dialogues between the main characters. It´s written in the past and the dialogues are direct style. Kind of language: Is common, there is no complicated or technical vocabulary, but no colloquial expression.

4. Critical comment
The story of "The Little Mermaid" was written in 1836, and published for...