The article analyses the peculiarities of the discourse of loneliness in its connection with the categories of time and space in Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man (1964). The relevance of the research is conditioned by the general tendency to revise the canon of modernist literature with a special focus on its ‘minor’ voices. Neither the novel chosen as the object of research nor Isherwood’s literary heritage in general is sufficiently represented in Ukrainian studies of Anglo-American literature. The purpose of the study is to identify and characterize the main forms through which the discourse of loneliness is actualized in the dimensions of time and space. The complex methodological approach applied in order to reach the objective involves hermeneutic analysis, close reading, aspects of genre studies (D. Higdon’s concept of the circadian novel) and narratology (G. Genette’s paratext theory). As a result of the study, it is discovered that loneliness in the novel is represented as a complex multidimensional phenomenon motivated by multiple factors of various origins. The analysis of paratextual elements allows for interpretation of loneliness as a key category of the text. The existential plane functions as the conceptual dominant, around which the entire discourse of loneliness is organized. The forms of realization of loneliness in the categories of time and space are reviewed and a distinction is made between their external and internal variations. External time is characterized as the novel’s historical and sociocultural background, connected with the consumerization and simulacrization of American society. At the internal level, the features of the circadian novel construction are defined: the chronological frame, limited not only by the physical boundaries of day but also the conceptual separation of the past and the future; the narrative focus on the present; the sensation of the moment; the effect of recursive repetition. External space is divided into local, represented by a multitude of small loci (the house, the hospital, the gym, etc.), and global, incarnated in the opposition of natural and urban. The internal spatial dimension has areas of memory, trauma, liberation, eschatology, which in various combinations actualize loneliness in the external spaces.

Either in the theoretical philosophical dimension of ontological and existential reflections or at the more empirical practical level of social, psychological, cultural problematics, the phenomenon of loneliness commands the attention of scholars from various domains, one of the most prominent fields of research being identity studies. This article deals with the specifics of the functioning of national cultural identity in the discourse of loneliness, typical of Christopher Isherwood's fiction. The object of the research is his 1962 novel "Down There on a Visit". With the help of a complex methodology which comprises elements of hermeneutic analysis, biographical method, close reading, and basic notions of identity studies, the representations of national cultural identity, its dynamics and transformations are examined within the problematic field of loneliness in the text. Terminological and phenomenological underpinnings of the concept of national cultural identity are established. The biographically determined aspects of the poetics and architectonics of the novel are traced based on diary and memoir sources. This involves an interpretation of the title that allows reading loneliness as the central concept of the author's intent, implemented at different levels of the text. A characterisation is made of the narrator-protagonist as well as four "antiheroes" who embody various worldviews and represent multiple modi of nationally and culturally conditioned loneliness: travellers, foreigners, refugees, etc. There are identified key ideas and themes, which allow for the actualisation of the national cultural aspect of the discourse of loneliness, are identified. Among them is the motif of journey, which is conceptualised into a metaphor of existential quest, self-reflection, self-discovery, identity formation and transformations. A special meaning is also ascribed to the concept of home, which encompasses the paradigms of societal alienation, flight to foreign lands, loss of roots as well as the closely related theme of migration with its motifs of seeking asylum, crossing and fluidity of borders, transitivity, etc.