Alfred Delvau's dictionaries : Vehicles of lexical and sociocultural change in Second-Empire Paris

Though a member of the Second Empire's literary avant-garde, Alfred Delvau (1825-1867) was above all an avid chronicler of Parisian popular culture. His many works detailing everyday life in Paris include two slang dictionaries: the Dictionaire erotique moderne (1864) and the Dictionnaire de la langue verte : argots parisiens compares (1866). In addition to their importance as a reaction against the codification of language and culture, Delvaus's dictionaries serve as useful glosses on literary texts and suggest the symbiosis between literary and popular culture in Napoleon III's Paris