What does 'agenbite of inwit' mean in Ulysses?
"Agenbite of inwit" is Middle English for "remorse of conscience" (literally the "again-bite" of the "inner wit"). It comes from the title of a 14th-century religious book. In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus repeats it to himself because he feels guilty for refusing to pray at his dying mother's bedside.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 1, Telemachus. Stephen Dedalus, in his own thoughts, first in "Telemachus" (Episode 1) and again later in the day.
Agenbite of inwit.
What it means in plain English
"Agen" means again, "bite" means bite, and "inwit" means the inner mind or conscience. Put together, it is the bite that comes back again and again: remorse. The phrase is the title of the Ayenbite of Inwyt, a moral treatise written in Kent in 1340.
Stephen's mother has recently died. Before she died, she asked him to kneel and pray for her, and he refused because he had given up his faith. Buck Mulligan teases him about it in the first episode. Stephen cannot stop thinking about it.
He uses the old, odd phrase instead of the plain word "guilt". That suits him: he hides behind learning, but the feeling underneath is raw.
Literary context
Guilt over his mother is the wound Stephen carries through the whole book. It surfaces again, most dramatically, when her ghost appears to him in "Circe".
The phrase also shows how Joyce uses words from older English to make the feelings of a modern character sound strange and new.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 1, 9 and 10
- Dan Michel of Northgate, Ayenbite of Inwyt (1340)
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
What language is 'agenbite of inwit'?
Middle English, the English of the 14th century.
Why does Stephen feel remorse?
He refused his dying mother's request that he kneel and pray for her.
Where does the phrase come from?
From the title of the Ayenbite of Inwyt, a religious book translated by Dan Michel of Northgate in 1340.
Related terms
Stephen Dedalus
The young writer who opens the novel — brilliant, grieving, and adrift. Joyce's Telemachus, the searching son.
The first line of Ulysses
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"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"
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