NOTES FOR THE FINAL PAPER
ENC 1102 sec 1417

Although for this second paper I'm not going to repeat the"Basicinstructions" (you have them in PAPER 1), they are still valid.But there is onething that I would like to repeat here: when you work on thispaper youshould take care not only aboutthe quality/originality of yourideas, but also about the WAY you ORGANIZE those ideas in a WELL-WRITTEN andCOHERENT work (that is: without sentences whose meanings areobscure;with sentences/paragraphs connected one another by means of alogic thatI can understand; with YOU present/alive in the text andthroughout thetext). Don't forget that if I get bored/annoyed when I read yourpaper youwon't be very pleased with your grade.

This final paper (5-6 double-space, typed pages) is due onApril 25;papers submitted after this date without a valid and writtenjustificationwill be graded with a B or less. This final paper (5-6 double-space, typedpages) is due on April 25; I want to see the paper on line (inNetscape) andaccessible from your home page. Papers submitted after this datewithouta valid and written justification will be graded with a B orless.

The Babysitter, by Robert Coover, (you can find the textat the reservedesk, West Library) is a short story that uses the medium offiction in orderto promote reflections on the processes involved in the acts ofreading andwriting fiction. When we read the story, we should think aboutthe conceptof fiction itself, about the definition(s) of "traditional"fiction (in terms ofgenres, structures, logic of narrative, etc.) and about thelimits that, in anage that we could characterize as the 'age of multiplicity', such(a) narrowdefinition(s) seem(s) to have.

This story somehow (and it is your task to tell me how) explorestherelationships existing between writers and texts, between writersand the actof writing, writers and readers, and between readers and theactivity ofreading and interpreting. Here I give you some ideas to startwith. You arefree to develop your own response to the story. After all, TheBabysitter more than many other stories asks for amultiplicity ofinterpretations. You can use some of the ideas I give you hereand expandthem, or you can find out your own way of "(mis)reading" thetext. Theonly things I WANT (meaning: it is not optional) to see in yourpaper aresome CLEAR and EXPLICIT references to the concepts/things that wehavedeveloped during the semester (traditional vs non-traditionalfiction, linearvs non-linear logic, hypertextual narratives, etc.).

QUESTIONS: