Agenbite of inwit

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Thornton traces the first allusion to a moral treatise compiled by a Dominican friar named Lorens under the title Somme des Vices et Vertus (1279) and translated into Kentish Middle English by Dan Michel of Northgate as Ayenbite of Inwyt (1340). The English title means "again-biting of in-wit," powerfully suggesting a mind (“wyt”) turned in upon itself, biting the offender with bad conscience again and again (“ayen”).

Shakespeare’s Macbeth dramatically represents the same thing, showing how the murderers’ minds torture them with guilty hallucinations about the acts they have committed. Macbeth is visited at a dinner party by Banquo's ghost. Lady Macbeth scrubs her hands as she walks in her sleep, trying to erase the “spots” of Duncan’s blood: "Yet here's a spot. . . . Out, damn'd spot" (5.1.31, 35). Both comment poignantly on what their thoughts are doing to them: “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (5.1.39-40); “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” (3.2.36).

In Scylla and Charybdis, a chapter filled to bursting with Shakespearean allusions, Stephen applies the phrase to a widowed Anne Hathaway: "Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience." He applies it also to himself, thinking of the pound that George Russell lent him when he was hungry: "Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s daughter. Agenbite of inwit." His remorse here seems mild, but at the end of Wandering Rocks, the self-punishment implied by the phrase becomes overwhelming as he thinks of his sister: "She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death. / We. / Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite. / Misery! Misery!"