A obra cômica de Luiz Carlos Martins Pena (1815-1848) apresenta um variado painel da sociedade do Rio de Janeiro de seu tempo, com um olhar sensível para a realidade vivida pela população livre, pobre ou remediada, branca ou mestiça. Mas, seguindo a sina de seus contemporâneos, encontra claros limites na representação do irrepresentável: a violência da escravidão. Ainda assim, Martins Pena deixa passar pelas frestas algo do conflito básico que opõe brancos e negros. As noções de popular e nacional que perpassam suas peças teriam influência longeva no esforço secular da intelectualidade de fundar a Pátria no nível simbólico.
Luiz Carlos Martins Pena (1815-1848) presents in his comedies a wide panel of Rio de Janeiro’s society of his time, by an advanced spirit, he was sensitive to the fate of the underclasses and focused in the free, poor, white or mestizo population, as well as in lower middle classes. But, following the limits of his contemporary writers, he had difficulties in representing what seemed to be not presentable: the violence of slavery, which only here and there could find some space to appear. Nevertheless, Martins Pena lets us understand things from the conflict that opposes the white and black people. The images/notions of “popular” and “national” that arise from his plays would have a long-lived influence on Brazilian intelligentsia’s efforts to build the idea of Nation at the symbolic level.
