Hi Julian
Sorry to be asking this question so late!
But I am also doing wordsworth and I am struggling a bit with some of the central ideas. Could you possibly explain your 'urban,natural and internal world' in a bit more depth?
And just out of curiosity- how many poems did you learn/use in your essay ?
Thanks in advance
Hi, thanks for your question. The urban, natural and internal world structure is based on the VCAA description of the text and I quite well breaks Wordsworth's poetry into 3 main 'scopes' that you can use to approach almost any topic - these 3 main 'scopes' aren't themes but I like to view them as 'super themes, so ideas that are almost always present in his poetry.
And just before I go further, here is a sample essay that uses this exact structure for your reference (it contains the actual analytical sentences that I used, so I will not include them in the discussion on this forum otherwise it will be too long:))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvVG5F-3TA&t=302s&ab_channel=JLTutoringLet's look at last year's VCAA 2020 Exam, Wordsworth Essay Topic: "What does Wordsworth's poetry teach us". I used 2 poems per paragraph, so 2 x 3 paragraphs = 6 poems in total (I learnt about 8-10 which I would interchange based off the topic)
The way I answered the prompt was:
P1: Wordsworth's teaches us to abstain from the meaningless pursuits of the urban world (here I am using the 'scope' of the urban world to answer this prompt by answering the prompt in relation to what he thinks about the urban world, so poems such as London 1802 or the World is Too much with us, are great examples. Bascically here, the urban world = big cities, they are all the evil in the world from Wordsworth's perspective, so the industrial revolution, the bustling cities where people only cared about wealth and were driven by greed etc.
P2: Wordsworth teaches us that true education and healing comes from nature (here, the natural world is the OPPOSITE of the urban world - and here you can talk about any poem that praises Nature e.g. Tables Turned, TIntern, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud etc). So natural world = natural landscape (so very broad place, but anywhere in Nature counts as the natural world)
P3: Wordsworth teaches us that we need to combine our experiences with frequent reflection in order to live a meaningful life (the internal world = the MIND of the poet - so how does the poet develop individually as a person? e,g. In the Two-Part Prelude, the poet realises that Nature is extremely powerful, more powerful than humanity, and his reflection upon these experiences is what lead to his "fulfilled identity" (Heaney quote from the Introduction) - this is probably the hardest concept to grasp but its also the area that will make your essay stand out so if you find it helpful, you can use my sample essay (in the link) as a guide.
So basically these three worlds (urban, natural, internal) shape Wordsworth's poetry and that's why it's a good idea to at least explore a topic from these three perspectives. All the best with your exams!