《莊子‧盜蹠篇》提到有一個名叫尾生的人與女子相約於橋下，女子並未如期赴約，可是尾生卻一直等待不肯離去，直到被大水淹死。故事中尾生信守承諾的決心令人震驚，不過這樣的行為卻極不合常理，因此後世在詮釋這個故事時也有完全不同的看法及角度。這個不尋常的故事情節，影響了後世一些故事，並發展成與原本故事完全不同主旨的新故事。因此這篇論文前半部主要探討有關尾生故事在歷史上的演變，並深入探討這些故事間的影響與新的發展，而論文的後半部則探討這類型故事中所隱藏的結構與象徵意涵。
The story of ”Wei Sheng” is included in the book of ”Zhuang Zhi”. In this story, a man named Wei Sheng was waiting for his date under the bridge. However, the lady stood him up while the man refused to leave. Eventually a flood ended the man's life as he kept his end of the promise. The unearthly event took place in this story is truly surprising for its readers. And their opinions toward this story are also varied. This story was not washed away by the waves of time; it influenced the contents of many future literatures that developed new stories based on the same concept. Thus the first half of this thesis focuses on the transition of Wei Sheng's story in the course of history and discusses in depth on new developments as well as influences from these stories. The second half of the thesis stresses the symbolisms o this types of stories.
