Oscar Wilde talks, on the two books that I compare, about the style of live into hight society and all that this carry on, as the good manners, the dinner parties into the society and the prestige that they obtain in these kind of parties. The relationship and manners between characters are similar on both writings, the visits that Algernon has are as Dorian Gray´s. Both principal characters have a butler which advices the visits, this is a common fact into the hight society that hte two books represent. Another resemblance is the two enviroment that of the city and that of the country.

Nevertheless, in "The picture of..." appear the importance of the theatre where your social class depended on the box you used (this element also appeares in the French Literature in authors as Balzac and Stendhal), but in "The Importanc..." doesn't appeared at all.

Other aspect which is similar in both writings is the fact of coincidence, one of the characteristics in Wilde style. In the first book the coincidence is given in the country house when a man died and this man is the person who wanted to kill Dorian. In the second book is that at the end of the book Algernon and Jack are brothers.

Both writings have a very correct language, which is another characteristics of Wilde. And also we can see that the author use in both the element called " play on words" and the perfect use of English language.

However one is a novel and the other is a playwriting, we can observe that one is longer than the other so, in the novel the facts are developed in a more complete way than in the play. But is in the playwriting where Wilde use more humour, and writes the facts from a more comical point of view, whereas in the novel this doesn't appear.
 
 
 
 

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Academic Year 1998/1999
28th May, 1999
© a.r.e.a/ Vicente Forés López
© Carmen Villar Valverde
Universitat de València Press.