LAUSR

Filipe Delfim Santos’ (2017) book Education and the Boarding School Novel—The Work of Jos e R egio is a well-written and insightful work in eight chapters, engaging with the genre of boarding school novels as well as related genres, such as the K€ unstlerroman and Bildungsroman, and their relevance for education. Santos shows at the example of Jos e R egio’s work A drop of blood how boarding school novels not only tell a story about boarding schools as educational institutions but also about the impact of the daily life and environment of such schools on students’ mental, character and self-development of, predominantly, boys. The book can loosely be divided into two parts, with Chapters 1–4 focusing on the broader topic of boarding school novels situated in the wider context of genres, its relevance to education and a reflection on boarding schools as special places in which Santos analyses the power relations and structures impacting on the development of the young mind. Chapters 5–8 see a shift of focus more strongly towards Jos e R egio as author, educator and artist, as well as a more detailed engagement with his boarding school novel A drop of blood as an autobiographical novel of R egio’s early life. In the first two chapters, Santos argues the relevance of non-fiction literature—in the case of school and boarding school novels often autobiographical—for education, especially for the study of the psychological effects of the schooling experience on the educated mind. Santos argues that the memories forming these texts reflect, on the one hand, the most influential and memorable events and circumstances on the novelist and, on the other hand, are usually of substantial length, allowing a psychological exploration of the student’s developing character at the time. Santos further offers a short overview of different literary genres in relation to boarding school novels and alludes to two distinct versions within this kind of novel: the boarding school novel in the Anglophone tradition—written for the young, idealising the school experience, and the more autobiographical tradition prevalent in German, Francophone and Portuguese literature, among others. The latter is usually written for a mature audience, offering a more critical perspective and often depicturing a much harsher reality than boarding school novels in the English tradition: