Keyword: «prospective category»

The article is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic features for creating retrospective and prospective images in the story «The solitaire» of American writer John Updike. The notion of polyreality is considered as a place in the fiction text where a combination of three temporary layers – the past, the present and the future – is actualized. The analysis of the story reveals the linguistic peculiarities of the presentation of events, facts, images, psychological condition that embraced the main character. The main focus is made on language with the help of which temporal shifts, segmentation of literary space and psycho-narration are formed.