SOURCE: Smith, Maxwell A. “Giono as Epic Novelist.” In Jean Giono, pp. 75-87, 180. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966.

In the following chapter from his full-length biographical-critical study of Giono, Smith analyzes the 1933 novel Le Serpent d'étoiles and the three mid-1930s novels of the Pan Trilogy—all of which use epic themes and settings.

I Le Serpent D'étoiles

After writing the semi-autobiographical Jean le bleu and before beginning his trilogy of epic novels, Giono has given us in Le Serpent d'étoiles (1933) his own personal impressions of the primitive shepherds who every spring drive their thousands of sheep from the parched plains of lower Provence to the fresh pastures of the Alpine plateaux. The tone is set at the very outset by his quotation from Walt Whitman: “Can your work face the open countryside and the ocean shores?”

In the recital of the shepherd we are...