Public vs Private Literature

Something that Doug said that struck me was the comment about how the literature from the 16th/17th centuries were written for private audiences while the pieces from the 18th century were more public. I haven't ever thought about whether a writing was public or private, I automatically assumed it was a public piece because I was reading it. The idea that Donne wrote "The Flea" for a very specific and private audience makes sense, it's pretty sexual to be made for public publications; but I guess I always thought that these writers wanted their writings to be shared/viewed, so that means they would have published them. Obviously this is not the case, and looking through my other text books I find other private writings like letters and correspondences like the ones between Ralegh and Queen Elizabeth, but, especially Donne's poems, seemed like something that would be extremely public in today's modern era. Maybe this is because of our culture's saturation of sexuality, Carl Junior's latest commercial for their hamburgers was a bikini clad woman... that was it, which makes me think that this poem would fit right in to our society and mainstream media.