The description of baryons as chiral solitons of the Nambu-Jona-Lasini
o (NJL) model is reviewed. A motivation for the soliton description of
baryons is provided from large N-C QCD. Rigorous results on the spont
aneous breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD are discussed. It is then ar
gued that the NJL model provides a fair description of low-energy hadr
on physics. The NJL model is therefore employed to mimic the low-energ
y chiral flavor dynamics of QCD. The model is bosonized by functional
integral techniques and the physical content of the emerging effective
meson theory is discussed. In particular, its relation to the Skyrme
model is established. The static soliton solutions of-the bosonized NJ
L model are found, their properties discussed, and the influence of va
rious meson fields studied. These considerations provide strong suppor
t of Witten's conjecture that baryons can be understood as soliton sol
utions of effective meson theories. The chiral soliton of the NJL mode
l is then quantized in a semiclassical fashion and various static prop
erties of the nucleon are studied. The dominating 1/N-C corrections to
the semiclassically quantized soliton are investigated. Time-dependen
t meson fluctuations off the chiral soliton are explored and employed
to estimate the quantum corrections to the soliton mass. Finally, hype
rons are described as chiral solitons of the NJL model. This is done i
n both, the Collective rotational approach of Yabu and Ando as well as
in the bound state approach of Callan and Klebanov.