This thesis is concerned with the longform poetics of Charles Olson and of John Cage, and with the role indeterminacy plays in their constitution and reception. The work of these authors poses unusual and particular challenges to readers, and it is towards readers and reading that this thesis is primarily oriented. Each chapter describes a problem or difficulty which these texts create for readers, and attempts to model that difficulty as clearly as possible in order to demonstrate how it forces readers to reassess received readerly protocols. As such, the thesis is also concerned with the limits of traditional critical methodologies in the face of such works. Though the concrete examples presented are mostly taken from a relatively circumscribed time and culture – the USA post-World War Two – I claim that the problematics of indeterminacy herein discussed are generally prevalent in long poetic forms, and in a certain sense constitutive of them. The thesis maps how ‘indeterminacy’ as a concept within literary criticism conflicts with that model of criticism concerned primarily with the ‘close reading’ of texts and the hermeneutic elucidation of ‘meaning’ thereby. Between historicism and close reading, it argues that this indeterminacy is most pervasive and yet most critically overlooked within traditions of what I call ‘longform’ poetics. The Introduction, discusses the unfitness of Cage’s early text ‘Indeterminacy’ to traditional modes of close-reading as exemplified in I.A. Richards and William Empson. It then recounts the developing discourse around poetic indeterminacy as it emerged through Roman Ingarden, Wolfgang Iser, Marjorie Perloff and Charles Altieri, and how that discourse increasingly configures the question of indeterminacy less around meaning and more around reading as an activity in itself. Chapter One provides a critical redescription of Olson’s hugely influential manifesto-essay ‘Projective Verse’ via comparison to Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry. Chapter Two addresses the problem of reading speed with reference to Olson’s interest in the cinema. Chapter Three describes the poetics of heterogeneity and surprise exemplified by Cage’s Mushroom Book. Chapter Four investigates the arrangement and disarray of Olson’s ‘archive poetics’ and his insistent habit of listing. Chapter Five considers how Cage’s cavilling over the idea of ‘ideas’ informs and deforms his huge mesostic lectures I-VI. Chapter Six uses Olson’s interest in models to tease out the constitution of his longform poetics on a set of indeterminate part-whole relations. Chapter Seven traces the effects of typos in two editions of Cage’s Anarchy, and in the thought and editorial practices of Olson. Throughout, the thesis delineates various protocols for reading, models for how to engage the longform texts of Olson and Cage, aiming to demonstrate how for these poetries one needs to select and ‘read through’ a poetics as a sort of optic, one through which such reticent texts can be made legible.

The Sanford Meisner Technique is among the most mysterious and misunderstood approaches to the craft of acting. Very often, it is taught poorly, incompletely, or even dangerously. Through the exploration of Meisner’s private life, as well as a detailed analysis of his system, this work aims to dispel some of the common misconceptions which plague the Technique and its most fervent supporters. After being made privy to his biography, readers will be taken through Meisner’s foundational exercises, beginning at the first phase of Repetition and ending with the introduction of text. In addition to the descriptions of student responsibilities, the conduct required of a Meisner teacher, both in a studio and in a university setting, will be discussed at length. Finally, to complete this comprehensive view of the Meisner Technique, there will be an analysis of its application to Longform Improvisation.

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The way digital news are being created today is very different from traditional printed methods. The digital news format has possibilities that printed versions do not have. For example, they can use animations, video, audio, and interactivity, referred to with a collective name as rich content in this study. The problem is that there is little knowledge about rich content, how it is being used and the reasons for using it. By interviewing journalists and content creators, this study aims to answer the following questions: How can rich content help convey a digital news story to the reader in a more engaging way than traditional methods? How can rich content help widen the audience of digital news stories? Through semi-structured interviews, the author explored how rich content is used, and how people think when creating it. Ten employees at the media house Schibsted, all working at different Norwegian newspapers, participated to this study. The results indicate that rich content in digital news articles can help convey a news story’s main points by delivering complex things in an easy and understandable way. As a result, rich content seems to encourage more readers to finish the whole article. This study has also found that rich content can be used to widen the audience, since it can make the promotion of an article more interesting and make more people eager to share the article on their own social media accounts. Furthermore, targeting news articles towards different user groups could help widen the audience even further. Strengths and weaknesses are discussed, and the future work section show potential in further investigating how different user groups are affected by rich content, and what types of articles can benefit the most by using rich content. / Det sätt som digitala nyhetsartiklar skapas på idag skiljer sig mycket från traditionella tryckta metoder. Det digitala nyhets formatet har möjligheter som tryckta versioner inte har. Till exempel, användning av animationer, video, ljud och interaktivitet, som med ett kollektivt namn kallas för rich content i denna studie. Problemet är att det finns begränsad kunskap om rich content, hur det används och anledningarna till användning av det. Genom intervjuer med journalister och innehållsskapare har denna studies mål varit att besvara följande frågeställningar: Hur kan rich content hjälpa till att förmedla digitala nyheter till läsaren på ett mer engagerande sätt än traditionella metoder? Hur kan rich content hjälpa till med att bredda publiken av digitala nyheter? Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer undersökte författaren hur rich content används och hur de anställda tänker under skapandet av rich content. Tio anställda på mediehuset Schibsted, som alla arbetar vid olika norska tidningar, deltog till denna studie. Resultaten indikerar att rich content i digitala nyhetsartiklar kan hjälpa att förmedla en nyhets huvudbudskap genom att leverera komplexa saker på ett enkelt och mer förståeligt sätt. Resultaten visar på att rich content verkar uppmuntra fler läsare till att läsa klart hela artikeln. Denna studies resultat visar även att rich content kan användas till att bredda publiken, eftersom det kan göra marknadsföringen av en artikeln mer intressant och får fler människor att vilja dela artikeln på sina egna sociala medier. Vidare kan riktade nyhetsartiklar mot olika användargrupper hjälpa till att bredda publiken ytterligare. Eventuella styrkor och svagheter diskuteras och stycket framtida arbete visar potentiell vidare undersökning gällande hur olika användargrupper påverkas av rich content och vad för typ av artiklar som kan dra störst fördel av användning av rich content.

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