A survey is given of the present state of experimental and theoretical knowledge of the kaonnucleon interaction, with special attention to recent applications of phenomenological dispersion theory in elucidating this interaction. Various alternative methods of analyzing the data are compared and contrasted. The topics covered include the low‐energy parameters, dispersion relation calculations of the real parts of the forward scattering amplitudes and the KNY coupling constants, analyses of the data by recently developed analytic continuation techniques, and high‐energy phenomenology.