Literature offers rich material for the study of music. Novelists have written about music-making and about listening to music in ways that give us precious indications about musical experiences. 19th century Portuguese literature is especially replete with references to music and song, and in particular to fado, an urban popular genre of significant importance for Portuguese culture at that time, particularly in Lisbon. This paper interrogates how fado is represented in the modern imagination, by focusing on the art of the portrait of the fadista, the prototypical figure of the fado singer, in 19th century Portuguese literature, and the ways the body, the voice and the posture of this figure are depicted. Through the example of Ramalho Ortigão‟s satirical portrait of the Lisbon fadista, in his chronicle “A criminalidade em Lisboa e o fadista,” published in the journal As Farpas in 1878, it explores how fado becomes indexical to criminality and the city margins through a sensual and organic description of the body of the fadista.

Keywords
fado, fadista, Portuguese literature (19th century), song, body, naturalism, criminality, music and literature



Biographical note