The Polyakov path integral over bordered surfaces

Following the general scheme of the convariant path integral quantization of gauge systems, two alternative formulations of the first quantized closed bosonic string in a position representation are presented. In both approaches the covariant path integral representations of the propagator and of the higher order off-shell amplitudes are constructed. For a wide class of gauges the explicit formulae for off-shell amplitudes are obtained. This paper is the continuation of our previous work where the corresponding problems in the open string case were considered 20].