This book collects essays on the works of Jan Potocki, whose oeuvre can be characterized by the tension between play and melancholy. Interpretations of selected aspects of his theatrical works, travelogues, political writings, and The Manuscript Found in Saragossa present the count as a perceptive, disillusioned observer of the world and, at the same time, a writer of considerable creative self-awareness, whose works reveal a multi-layered understanding of irony. On the other hand, the book explores the rich representation of the figures of melancholy contained in Potocki’s opus magnum, such as his labyrinthine vision of reality, its theatricalization, the poetics of excess, attempts to mathematize reality, as well as images of emptiness, exhaustion, rootlessness, and wandering.