"The Reconstruction of Lisbon exposes how Fado lyricists have appropriated popular novelist and playwright Julio Dantas's forging of Mouraria fadista/ prostitute Maria Severa as a national heroine, and the Fado as Portugal's national song - in A Severa (1901) and A Severa: Peca em Quatro Actos (1901) - to manifest a sub-rosa criticism of the Estado Novo's demolition of the Mouraria between the 1930s and 1970s. The lyricists exploit Dantas's fictionalization/ dramatization of Severa's life, death, and consequent legacy to link Severa's Mouraria and the Fado to the Portuguese character, to evoke national sympathy, or even outrage for the local cause of the erasing of the Mouraria."--BOOK JACKET.