Oscar Wilde's writing style was much influenced by that of Walter Pater, who taught him at Oxford and was one of the most influential stylists of the nineteenth century. It was even said of Pater that he would decide on the scansion and shape of a sentence before he knew quite what the words were to be, and that his prose was more carefully arranged than anyone else's poetry. You can see this Mandarin style of prose very clearly in The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel, like Wilde's plays, has many epigrams (quite often, they are the same epigrams, since Wilde was notorious for self-plagiarism), but they are surrounded by highly-wrought, musical prose, with a strong emphasis on color, scent, and the detailed description of beautiful objects.

Kafka's prose (with the caveat that it is translated) is much more workmanlike and straightforward. He describes objects (the contents of Gregor's room, for instance) in some detail, but the simple phrases reflect the humble, utilitarian nature of the objects they describe. His dialogue is similarly abrupt.

Wilde and Kafka are both describing impossible events in a naturalistic style, making both Dorian Gray and "The Metamorphosis" important precursors to magical realism. The more rarefied and poetic style of Wilde's prose reflects both his commitment to aestheticism, and the class and type of people he is describing.