Broken chiral symmetry has become the basis for a unified treatment of hadronic interactions at low energies. After reviewing mechanisms for spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, I outline the construction of the low--energy effective field theory of the Standard Model called chiral perturbation theory. The loop expansion and the renormalization procedure for this nonrenormalizable quantum field theory are developed. Evidence for the standard scenario with a large quark condensate is presented, in particular from high--statistics lattice calculations of the meson mass spectrum. Elastic pion--pion scattering is discussed as an example of a complete calculation to O(p^6) in the low--energy expansion. The meson--baryon system is the subject of the last lecture. After a short summary of heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory, a recent analysis of pion--nucleon scattering to O(p^3) is reviewed. Finally, I describe some very recent progress in the chiral approach to the nucleon--nucleon interaction.

47 pages, Latex with lamuphys.sty, 9 figures embedded. To appear in Proc. of 37. Internationale Universitaetswochen fuer Kern- und Teilchenphysik, Schladming, Austria, Feb. 28 - March 7, 1998