Postmodern man is faced with many ontological questions caused by social, political and environmental problems in the world. He loses his faith in the development and progress of humanity, science, and in general all the values that they tried to establish and preserve in the modern period. Postmodern man finds escape from harsh reality in the return to tradition and myth, he turns to the irrational, spiritual and individual. In Croatian literature, the generation of authors who wrote such works are collectively called fantasists. One of the authors whose novel is the subject of this paper is included among the fantasy artists, namely Pavao Pavličić. In addition to writing literary works, Pavličić also researched Croatian baroque literature and mannerism. Pavličić wrote The Coral Gate during his research on Gundulić's Osman, which inspired him to write the aforementioned novel. Inspiration for writing a novel was also found in his research by another author whose novel, The Name of the Rose, is discussed in this paper; medievalist Umberto Eco. In addition to the fact that the authors were inspired by tradition to create them, these novels also have intertextuality in common. In The Coral Gate, Pavličić uses Gundulić's Osman as a metatext, while Eco uses various texts from the fields of literature, philosophy, religion, and the like. Also, the central motif of both novels is interesting – the motif of the book around which the whole story develops and certain characteristics of the traditional myth that both novels possess. All these features prove that these novels are actually ideal examples of postmodern literature.